CHAPTER XI

Pages 161 to 163.

During six months I saw six girls leave the pastor’s establishment for several reasons: Tasi, because her mother was ill and she, that rare phenomenon, the eldest in a biological household, was needed at home; Tua, because she had come out lowest in the missionaries’ annual examination which her mother attributed to favouritism on the part of the pastor; Luna, because her stepmother, whom she disliked, left her father and thus made her home more attractive and because under the influence of a promiscuous older cousin she began to tire of the society of younger girls and take an interest in love affairs; Lita, because her father ordered her home, because with the permission of the pastor, but without consulting her family, she went off for a three weeks’ visit in another island. Going home for Lita involved residence in the far end of the other village, necessitating a complete change of friends. The novelty of the new group and new interests kept her from in any way chafing at the change. Sala, a stupid idle girl, had eloped from the household of the pastor.

APPENDIX II

METHODOLOGY OF THIS STUDY

It is impossible to present a single and unified picture of the adolescent girl in Samoa and at the same time to answer most satisfactorily the various kinds of questions which such a study will be expected to answer. For the ethnologist in search of data upon the usages and rites connected with adolescence it is necessary to include descriptions of customs which have fallen into partial decay under the impact of western propaganda and foreign example. Traditional observances and attitudes are also important in the study of the adolescent girl in present-day Samoa because they still form a large part of the thought pattern of her parents, even if they are no longer given concrete expression in the girl’s cultural life. But this double necessity of describing not only the present environment and the girl’s reaction to it, but also of interpolating occasionally some description of the more rigid cultural milieu of her mother’s girlhood, mars to some extent the unity of the study.

The detailed observations were all made upon a group of girls living in three practically contiguous villages on one coast of the island of Taū. The data upon the ceremonial usages surrounding birth, adolescence and marriage were gathered from all of the seven villages in the Manu’a Archipelago.

The method of approach is based upon the assumption that a detailed intensive investigation will be of more value than a more diffused and general study based upon a less accurate knowledge of a greater number of individuals. Dr. Van Waters’ study of _The Adolescent Girl Among Primitive Peoples_ has exhausted the possibilities of an investigation based upon the merely external observations of the ethnologist who is giving a standardised description of a primitive culture. We have a huge mass of general descriptive material without the detailed observations and the individual cases in the light of which it would be possible to interpret it.

The writer therefore chose to work in one small locality, in a group numbering only six hundred people, and spend six months accumulating an intimate and detailed knowledge of all the adolescent girls in this community. As there were only sixty-eight girls between the ages of nine and twenty, quantitative statements are practically valueless for obvious reasons: the probable error of the group is too large; the age classes are too small, etc. The only point at which quantitative statements can have any relevance is in regard to the variability within the group, as the smaller the variability within the sample, the greater the general validity of the results.

Furthermore, the type of data which we needed is not of the sort which lends itself readily to quantitative treatment. The reaction of the girl to her stepmother, to relatives acting as foster parents, to her younger sister, or to her older brother,—these are incommensurable in quantitative terms. As the physician and the psychiatrist have found it necessary to describe each case separately and to use their cases as illumination of a thesis rather than as irrefutable proof such as it is possible to adduce in the physical sciences, so the student of the more intangible and psychological aspects of human behaviour is forced to illuminate rather than demonstrate a thesis. The composition of the background against which the girl acts can be described in accurate and general terms, but her reactions are a function of her own personality and cannot be described without reference to it. The generalisations are based upon a careful and detailed observation of a small group of subjects. These results will be illuminated and illustrated by case histories.

The conclusions are also all subject to the limitation of the personal equation. They are the judgments of one individual upon a mass of data, many of the most significant aspects of which can, by their very nature, be known only to herself. This was inevitable and it can only be claimed in extenuation that as the personal equation was held absolutely constant, the different parts of the data are strictly commensurable. The judgment on the reaction of Lola to her uncle and of Sona to her cousin are made on exactly the same basis.

Another methodological device which possibly needs explanation is the substitution of a cross sectional study for a linear one. Twenty-eight children who as yet showed no signs of puberty, fourteen children who would probably mature within the next year or year and a half, and twenty-five girls who had passed puberty within the last four years but were not yet classed by the community as adults, were studied in detail. Less intensive observations were also made upon the very little children and the young married women. This method of taking cross sections, samples of individuals at different periods of physical development, and arguing that a group in an earlier stage will later show the characteristics which appear in another group at a later stage, is, of course, inferior to a linear study in which the same group is under observation for a number of years. A very large number of cases has usually been the only acceptable defence of such a procedure. The number of cases included in this investigation, while very small in comparison with the numbers mustered by any student of American children, is nevertheless a fair-sized sample in terms of the very small population of Samoa (a rough eight thousand in all four islands of American Samoa) and because the only selection was geographical. It may further be argued that the almost drastic character of the conclusions, the exceedingly few exceptions which need to be made, further validate the size of the sample. The adoption of the cross section method was, of course, a matter of expediency, but the results when carefully derived from a fair sample, may be fairly compared with the results obtained by using the linear method, when the same subjects are under observation over a period of years. This is true when the conclusions to be drawn are general and not individual. For the purposes of psychological theory, it is sufficient to know that children in a certain society walk, on the average, at twelve months, and talk, on the average, at fifteen months. For the purposes of the diagnostician, it is necessary to know that John walked at eighteen months and did not talk until twenty months. So, for general theoretical purposes, it is enough to state that little girls just past puberty develop a shyness and lack of self-possession in the presence of boys, but if we are to understand the delinquency of Mala, it is necessary to know that she prefers the company of boys to that of girls and has done so for several years.

PARTICULAR METHODS USED

The description of the cultural background was obtained in orthodox fashion, first through interviews with carefully chosen informants, followed by checking up their statements with other informants and by the use of many examples and test cases. With a few unimportant exceptions this material was obtained in the Samoan language and not through the medium of interpreters. All of the work with individuals was done in the native language, as there were no young people on the island who spoke English.

Although a knowledge of the entire culture was essential for the accurate evaluation of any particular individual’s behaviour, a detailed description will be given only of those aspects of the culture which are immediately relevant to the problem of the adolescent girl. For example, if I observe Pele refuse point blank to carry a message to the house of a relative, it is important to know whether she is actuated by stubbornness, dislike of the relative, fear of the dark, or fear of the ghost which lives near by and has a habit of jumping on people’s backs. But to the reader a detailed exposition of the names and habits of all the local ghost population would be of little assistance in the appreciation of the main problem. So all descriptions of the culture which are not immediately relevant are omitted from the discussion but were not omitted from the original investigation. Their irrelevancy has, therefore, been definitely ascertained.

The knowledge of the general cultural pattern was supplemented by a detailed study of the social structure of the three villages under consideration. Each household was analysed from the standpoint of rank, wealth, location, contiguity to other households, relationship to other households, and the age, sex, relationship, marital status, number of children, former residence, etc., of each individual in the household. This material furnished a general descriptive basis for a further and more careful analysis of the households of the subjects, and also provided a check on the origin of feuds or alliances between individuals, the use of relationship terms, etc. Each child was thus studied against a background which was known in detail.

A further mass of detailed information was obtained about the subjects: approximate age (actual age can never be determined in Samoa), order of birth, numbers of brothers and sisters, who were older and younger than the subject, number of marriages of each parent, patrilocal and matrilocal residence, years spent in the pastor’s school and in the government school and achievement there, whether the child had ever been out of the village or off the island, sex experience, etc. The children were also given a makeshift intelligence test, colour-naming, rote memory, opposites, substitution, ball and field, and picture interpretation. These tests were all given in Samoan; standardisation was, of course, impossible and ages were known only relatively; they were mainly useful in assisting me in placing the child within her group, and have no value for comparative purposes. The results of the tests did indicate, however, a very low variability within the group. The tests were supplemented by a questionnaire which was not administered formally but filled in by random questioning from time to time. This questionnaire gave a measure of their industrial knowledge, the extent to which they participated in the lore of the community, of the degree to which they had absorbed European teaching in matters like telling time, reading the calendar, and also of the extent to which they had participated in or witnessed scenes of death, birth, miscarriage, etc.

But this quantitative data represents the barest skeleton of the material which was gathered through months of observation of the individuals and of groups, alone, in their households, and at play. From these observations, the bulk of the conclusions are drawn concerning the attitudes of the children towards their families and towards each other, their religious interests or the lack of them, and the details of their sex lives. This information cannot be reduced to tables or to statistical statements. Naturally in many cases it was not as full as in others. In some cases it was necessary to pursue a more extensive enquiry in order to understand some baffling aspect of the child’s behaviour. In all cases the investigation was pursued until I felt that I understood the girl’s motivation and the degree to which her family group and affiliation in her age group explained her attitudes.

The existence of the pastor’s boarding-school for girls past puberty provided me with a rough control group. These girls were so severely watched that heterosexual activities were impossible; they were grouped together with other girls of the same age regardless of relationship; they lived a more ordered and regular life than the girls who remained in their households. The ways in which they differed from other girls of the same age and more resembled European girls of the same age follow with surprising accuracy the lines suggested by the specific differences in environment. However, as they lived part of the time at home, the environmental break was not complete and their value as a control group is strictly limited.

APPENDIX III

SAMOAN CIVILISATION AS IT IS TO-DAY

The scene of this study was the little island of Taū. Along one coast of the island, which rises precipitately to a mountain peak in the centre, cluster three little villages, Lumā and Siufaga, side by side, and Faleasao, half a mile away. On the other end of the island is the isolated village of Fitiuta, separated from the other three villages by a long and arduous trail. Many of the people from the other villages have never been to Fitiuta, eight miles away. Twelve miles across the open sea are the two islands of Ofu and Olesega, which with Taū, make up the Manu’a Archipelago, the most primitive part of Samoa. Journeys in slender outrigger canoes from one of these three little islands to another are frequent, and the inhabitants of Manu’a think of themselves as a unit as over against the inhabitants of Tutuila, the large island where the Naval Station is situated. The three islands have a population of a little over two thousand people, with constant visiting, inter-marrying, adoption going on between the seven villages of the Archipelago.

The natives still live in their beehive-shaped houses with floors of coral rubble, no walls except perishable woven blinds which are lowered in bad weather, and a roof of sugar-cane thatch over which it is necessary to bind palm branches in every storm. They have substituted cotton cloth for their laboriously manufactured bark cloth for use as everyday clothing, native costume being reserved for ceremonial occasions. But the men content themselves with a wide cotton loin cloth, the _lavalava_, fastened at the waist with a dexterous twist of the material. This costume permits a little of the tattooing which covers their bodies from knee to the small of the back, to appear above and below the folds of the _lavalava_. Tattooing has been taboo on Manu’a for two generations, so only a part of the population have made the necessary journey to another island in search of a tattooer. Women wear a longer _lavalava_ and a short cotton dress falling to their knees. Both sexes go barefoot and hats are worn only to Church, on which occasions the men don white shirts and white coats, ingeniously tailored by the native women in imitation of Palm Beach coats which have fallen into their hands. The women’s tattooing is much sparser than the men’s, a mere matter of dots and crosses on arms, hands, and thighs. Garlands of flowers, flowers in the hair, and flowers twisted about the ankles, serve to relieve the drabness of the faded cotton clothing, and on gala days, beautifully patterned bark cloth, fine mats, gaily bordered with red parrot feathers, headdresses of human hair decorated with plumes and feathers, recall the more picturesque attire of pre-Christian days.

Sewing-machines have been in use for many years, although the natives are still dependent upon some deft-handed sailor for repairs. Scissors have also been added to the household equipment, but wherever possible a Samoan woman still uses her teeth or a piece of bamboo. At the Missionary boarding-schools a few of the women have learned to crochet and embroider, using their skill particularly to ornament the plump, hard pillows which are rapidly displacing the little bamboo head rests. Sheets of white cotton have taken the place of sheets of firmly woven mats or of bark cloth. Mosquito nets of cotton netting make a native house much more endurable than must have been the case when bark cloth tents were the only defence against insects. The netting is suspended at night from stout cords hung across the house, and the edges weighted down with stones, so that prowling dogs, pigs, and chickens wander through the house at will without disturbing the sleepers.

Agate buckets share with hollowed cocoanut shells the work of bringing water from the springs and from the sea, and a few china cups and glasses co-operate with the cocoanut drinking cups. Many households have an iron cook pot in which they can boil liquids in preference to the older method of dropping red hot stones into a wooden vessel containing the liquid to be heated. Kerosene lamps and lanterns are used extensively; the old candle-nut clusters and cocoanut oil lamps being reinstated only in times of great scarcity when they cannot afford to purchase kerosene. Tobacco is a much-prized luxury; the Samoans have learned to grow it, but imported varieties are very much preferred to their own.

Outside the household the changes wrought by the introduction of European articles are very slight. The native uses an iron knife to cut his copra and an iron adze blade in place of the old stone one. But he still binds the rafters of his house together with cinet and sews the parts of his fishing canoes together. The building of large canoes has been abandoned. Only small canoes for fishing are built now, and for hauling supplies over the reef the natives build keeled rowboats. Only short voyages are made in small canoes and rowboats, and the natives wait for the coming of the Naval ship to do their travelling. The government buys the copra and with the money so obtained the Samoans buy cloth, thread, kerosene, soap, matches, knives, belts, and tobacco, pay their taxes (levied on every man over a certain height as age is an indeterminate matter), and support the church.

And yet, while the Samoans use these products of a more complex civilisation, they are not dependent upon them. With the exception of making and using stone tools, it is probably safe to say that none of the native arts have been lost. The women all make bark cloth and weave fine mats. Parturition still takes place on a piece of bark cloth, the umbilical cord is cut with a piece of bamboo, and the new baby is wrapped in a specially prepared piece of white bark cloth. If soap cannot be obtained, the wild orange provides a frothy substitute. The men still manufacture their own nets, make their own hooks, weave their own eel traps. And although they use matches when they can get them, they have not lost the art of converting a carrying stick into a fire plow at a moment’s notice.

Perhaps most important of all is the fact that they still depend entirely upon their own foods, planted with a sharpened pole in their own plantations. Breadfruit, bananas, taro, yams, and cocoanuts form a substantial and monotonous accompaniment for the fish, shell fish, land crabs, and occasional pigs and chickens. The food is carried down to the village in baskets, freshly woven from palm leaves. The cocoanuts are grated on the end of a wooden “horse,” pointed with shell or iron; the breadfruit and taro are supported on a short stake, tufted with cocoanut husk, and the rind is grated off with a piece of cocoanut shell. The green bananas are skinned with a bamboo knife. The whole amount of food for a family of fifteen or twenty for two or three days is cooked at once in a large circular pit of stones. These are first heated to white heat; the ashes are then raked away; the food placed on the stones and the oven covered with green leaves, under which the food is baked thoroughly. Cooking over, the food is stored in baskets which are hung up inside the main house. It is served on palm leaf platters, garnished with a fresh banana leaf. Fingers are the only knives and forks, and a wooden finger bowl is passed ceremoniously about at the end of the meal.

Furniture, with the exception of a few chests and cupboards, has not invaded the house. All life goes on on the floor. Speaking on one’s feet within the house is still an unforgivable breach of etiquette, and the visitor must learn to sit cross-legged for hours without murmuring.

The Samoans have been Christian for almost a hundred years. With the exception of a small number of Catholics and Mormons, all the natives of American Samoa are adherents of the London Missionary Society, known in Samoa as the “Church of Tahiti,” from its local origin. The Congregationalist missionaries have been exceedingly successful in adapting the stern doctrine and sterner ethics of a British Protestant sect to the widely divergent attitudes of a group of South Sea islanders. In the Missionary boarding-schools they have trained many boys as native pastors and as missionaries for other islands, and many girls to be the pastors’ wives. The pastor’s house is the educational as well as the religious centre of the village. In the pastor’s school the children learn to read and write their own language, to which the early missionaries adapted our script, to do simple sums and sing hymns. The missionaries have been opposed to teaching the natives English, or in any way weaning them away from such of the simplicity of their primitive existence as they have not accounted harmful. Accordingly, although the elders of the church preach excellent sermons and in many cases have an extensive knowledge of the Bible (which has been translated into Samoan), although they keep accounts, and transact lengthy business affairs, they speak no English, or only very little of it. On Taū there were never more than half a dozen individuals at one time who had any knowledge of English.

The Naval Government has adopted the most admirable policy of benevolent non-interference in native affairs. It establishes dispensaries and conducts a hospital where native nurses are trained. These nurses are sent out into the villages where they have surprising success in the administration of the very simple remedies at their command, castor oil, iodine, argyrol, alcohol rubs, etc. Through periodic administrations of salvarsan the more conspicuous symptoms of yaws are rapidly disappearing. And the natives are learning to come to the dispensaries for medicine rather than aggravate conjunctivitis to blindness by applying irritating leaf poultices to the inflamed eyes.

Reservoirs have been constructed in most of the villages, providing an unpolluted water supply at a central fountain where all the washing and bathing is done. Copra sheds in each village store the copra until the government ship comes to fetch it. Work on copra sheds, on village boats used in hauling the copra over the reef, on roads between villages, on the repairs of the water system, is carried through by a levy upon the village as a whole, conforming perfectly to the native pattern of communal work. The government operates through appointed district governors and county chiefs, and elected “mayors” in each village. The administrations of these officials are peaceful and effective in proportion to the importance of their rank in the native social organisation. Each village also has two policemen who act as town criers, couriers on government inspections, and carriers of the nurses’ equipment from village to village. There are also county judges. A main court is presided over by an American civil judge and a native judge. The penal code is a random combination of government edicts, remarkable for their tolerance of native custom. When no pronouncement on a point of law is found in this code, the laws of the state of California, liberally interpreted and revised, are used to provide a legalistic basis for the court’s decision. These courts have taken over the settlement of disputes concerning important titles, and property rights; and the chief causes of litigation in the “courthouse” at Pago Pago are the same which agitated the native _fonos_ some hundred years ago.

Schools are now maintained in many villages, where the children, seated cross-legged on the floor of a large native house, learn the haziest of English from boys whose knowledge of the language is little more extensive than theirs. They also learn part singing, at which they are extraordinarily adept, and to play cricket and many other games. The schools are useful in instilling elementary ideas of hygiene, and in breaking down the barriers between age and sex groups and narrow residential units. From the pupils in the outlying schools the most promising are selected to become nurses, teachers, and candidates for the native marine corps, the _Fitafitas_, who constitute the police, hospital corpsmen and interpreters for the naval administration. The Samoans’ keen feeling for social distinction makes them particularly able to co-operate with a government in which there is a hierarchy of officialdom; the shoulder stars and bars are fitted into their own system of rank without confusion. When the Governor and group of officers pay an official visit, the native-talking chief distributes the kava, first to the Governor, then to the highest chief among the hosts, then to the Commander of the Naval Yard, then to the next highest chief, without any difficulty.

In all the descriptions of Samoan life, one of the points which must have struck the reader most forcibly is the extreme flexibility of the civilisation as it is found to-day. This flexibility is the result of the blending of the various European ideas, beliefs, mechanical devices, with the old primitive culture. It is impossible to say whether it is due to some genius in the Samoan culture itself, or to fortunate accident, that these foreign elements have received such a thorough and harmonious acculturation. In many parts of the South Seas contact with white civilisation has resulted in the complete degeneration of native life, the loss of native techniques, and traditions, and the annihilation of the past. In Samoa this is not so. The growing child is faced by a smaller dilemma than that which confronts the American-born child of European parentage. The gap between parents and children is narrow and painless, showing few of the unfortunate aspects usually present in a period of transition. The new culture, by offering alternative careers to the children has somewhat lightened the parental yoke. But essentially the children are still growing up in a homogeneous community with a uniform set of ideals and aspirations. The present ease of adolescence among Samoan girls which has been described cannot safely be attributed to a period of transition. The fact that adolescence can be a period of unstressed development is just as significant. Given no additional outside stimulus or attempt to modify conditions, Samoan culture might remain very much the same for two hundred years.

But it is only fair to point out that Samoan culture, before white influence, was less flexible and dealt less kindly with the individual aberrant. Aboriginal Samoa was harder on the girl sex delinquent than is present-day Samoa. And the reader must not mistake the conditions which have been described for the aboriginal ones, nor for typical primitive ones. Present-day Samoan civilisation is simply the result of the fortuitous and on the whole fortunate impetus of a complex, intrusive culture upon a simpler and most hospitable indigenous one.

In former times, the head of the household had life and death powers over every individual under his roof. The American legal system and the missionary teachings between them have outlawed and banished these rights. The individual still benefits by the communal ownership of property, by the claims which he has on all family land; but he no longer suffers from an irksome tyranny which could be enforced with violence and possible death. Deviations from chastity were formerly punished in the case of girls by a very severe beating and a stigmatising shaving of the head. Missionaries have discouraged the beating and head shaving, but failed to substitute as forceful an inducement to circumspect conduct. The girl whose sex activities are frowned upon by her family is in a far better position than that of her great-grandmother. The navy has prohibited, the church has interdicted the defloration ceremony, formerly an inseparable part of the marriages of girls of rank; and thus the most potent inducement to virginity has been abolished. If for these cruel and primitive methods of enforcing a stricter régime there had been substituted a religious system which seriously branded the sex offender, or a legal system which prosecuted and punished her, then the new hybrid civilisation might have been as heavily fraught with possibilities of conflict as the old civilisation undoubtedly was.

This holds true also for the ease with which young people change their residence. Formerly it might have been necessary to flee to a great distance to avoid being beaten to death. Now the severe beatings are deprecated, but the running-away pattern continues. The old system of succession must have produced many heartburns in the sons who did not obtain the best titles; to-day two new professions are open to the ambitious, the ministry and the _Fitafitas_. The taboo system, although never as rigorous in Samoa as in other parts of Polynesia, undoubtedly compelled the people to lead more circumspect lives and stressed more vividly difference in rank. The few economic changes which have been introduced have been just sufficient to slightly upset the system of prestige which was based on display and lavish distribution of property. Acquiring wealth is easier, through raising copra, government employment, or manufacturing curios for the steamer-tourist trade on the main island. Many high chiefs do not find it worth while to keep up the state to which they are entitled, while numerous upstarts have an opportunity to acquire prestige denied to them under a slower method of accumulating wealth. The intensity of local feeling with its resulting feuds, wars, jealousies and conflicts (in the case of inter-marriage between villages) is breaking down with the improved facilities for transportation and the co-operation between villages in religious and educational matters.

Superior tools have partially done away with the tyranny of the master craftsman. The man who is poor, but ambitious, finds it easier to acquire a guest house than it would have been when the laborious highly specialised work was done with stone tools. The use of some money and of cloth, purchased from traders, has freed women from part of the immense labour of manufacturing mats and tapa as units of exchange and for clothing. On the other hand, the introduction of schools has taken an army of useful little labourers out of the home, especially in the case of the little girls who cared for the babies, and so tied the adult women more closely to routine domestic tasks.

Puberty was formerly much more stressed than it is to-day. The menstrual taboos against participation in the kava ceremony and in certain kinds of cooking were felt and enforced. The girl’s entrance into the _Aualuma_ was always, not just occasionally, marked by a feast. The unmarried girls and the widows slept, at least part of the time, in the house of the _taupo_. The _taupo_ herself had a much harder life. To-day she pounds the kava root, but in her mother’s day it was chewed until jaws ached from the endless task. Formerly, should a defection from chastity be disclosed at her marriage, she faced being beaten to death. The adolescent boy faced tattooing, a painful, wearisome proceeding, additionally stressed by group ceremony and taboo. To-day, scarcely half of the young men are tattooed; the tattooing is performed at a much more advanced age and has no connection with puberty; the ceremonies have vanished and it has become a mere matter of a fee to the artist.

The prohibitions against blood revenge and personal violence have worked like a yeast in giving greater personal freedom. As many of the crimes which were formerly punished in this fashion are not recognised as crimes by the new authorities, no new mechanism of punishment has been devised for the man who marries the divorced wife of a man of higher rank, the miscreant who gossips outside his village and so brings his village into disrepute, the insolent detractor who recites another’s genealogy, or the naughty boy who removes the straws from the pierced cocoanuts and thus offers an unspeakable affront to visitors. And the Samoan is not in the habit of committing many of the crimes listed in our legal code. He steals and is fined by the government as he was formerly fined by the village. But he comes into very slight conflict with the central authorities. He is too accustomed to taboos to mind a quarantine prohibition which parades under the same guise; too accustomed to the exactions of his relations to fret under the small taxation demands of the government. Even the stern attitude formerly taken by the adults towards precocity has now been subdued, for what is a sin at home becomes a virtue at school.

The new influences have drawn the teeth of the old culture. Cannibalism, war, blood revenge, the life and death power of the _matai_, the punishment of a man who broke a village edict by burning his house, cutting down his trees, killing his pigs, and banishing his family, the cruel defloration ceremony, the custom of laying waste plantations on the way to a funeral, the enormous loss of life in making long voyages in small canoes, the discomfort due to widespread disease—all these have vanished. And as yet their counterparts in producing misery have not appeared.

Economic instability, poverty, the wage system, the separation of the worker from his land and from his tools, modern warfare, industrial disease, the abolition of leisure, the irksomeness of a bureaucratic government—these have not yet invaded an island without resources worth exploiting. Nor have the subtler penalties of civilisation, neuroses, philosophical perplexities, the individual tragedies due to an increased consciousness of personality and to a greater specialisation of sex feeling, or conflicts between religion and other ideals, reached the natives. The Samoans have only taken such parts of our culture as made their life more comfortable, their culture more flexible, the concept of the mercy of God without the doctrine of original sin.

APPENDIX IV

THE MENTALLY DEFECTIVE AND THE MENTALLY DISEASED

Without any training in the diagnosis of the mentally diseased and without any apparatus for exact diagnosis of the mentally defective, I can simply record a number of amateur observations which may be of interest to the specialist interested in the possibilities of studying the pathology of primitive peoples. In the Manu’a Archipelago with a population of a little over two thousand people, I saw one case which would be classed as idiocy, one imbecile, one boy of fourteen who appeared to be both feeble-minded and insane, one man of thirty who showed a well-systematised delusion of grandeur, and one sexual invert who approximated in a greater development of the breasts, mannerism and attitudes of women and a preference for women’s activities, to the norm of the opposite sex. The idiot child was one of seven children; he had a younger brother who had walked for over a year, and the mother declared that there were two years between the children. His legs were shrunken and withered, he had an enormous belly and a large head set very low on his shoulders. He could neither walk nor talk, drooled continually, and had no command over his excretory functions. The imbecile girl lived on another island and I had no opportunity to observe her over any length of time. She was one or two years past puberty and was pregnant at the time that I saw her. She could talk and perform the simple tasks usually performed by children of five or six. She seemed to only half realise her condition and giggled foolishly or stared vacantly when it was mentioned. The fourteen-year-old boy was at the time when I saw him definitely demented, giving an external picture of catatonic dementia præcox. He took those attitudes which were urged upon him, at times, however, becoming violent and unmanageable. The relatives insisted that he had always been stupid but only recently become demented. For this I have only their word as I was only able to observe the boy during a few days. In no one of these three cases of definite mental deficiency was there any family history which threw any light upon the matter. Among the girls whom I studied in detail only one, Sala, discussed in Chapter X, was sufficiently inferior to the general norm of intelligence to approximate to a moron.

The man with the systematised delusion of grandeur was said to be about thirty years of age. Gaunt and emaciated, he looked much older. He believed that he was Tufele, the high chief of another island and the governor of the entire archipelago. The natives conspired against him to rob him of his rank and to exalt an usurper in his stead. He was a member of the Tufele family but only very remotely so that his delusion bore no relation to reality as he would never have had any hope of succeeding to the title. The natives, he said, refused to give him food, mocked him, disallowed his claims, did their best to destroy him, while a few white people were wise enough to recognise his rank. (The natives instructed visitors to address him in the chief’s language because he consented to dance, a weird pathetic version of the usual style, only when so opportuned.) He had no outbreaks of violence, was morose, recessive, only able to work at times and never able to do heavy work or to be trusted to carry through any complicated task. He was treated with universal gentleness and toleration by his relatives and neighbours.

From informants I obtained accounts of four cases on Tutuila which sounded like the manic stage of manic depressive insanity. All four of these individuals had been violently destructive, and uncontrollable for a period of time, but had later resumed what the natives considered normal functioning. An old woman who had died some ten years before was said to have compulsively complied with any command that was given her. There was one epileptic boy in Taū, a member of an otherwise normal family of eight children. He fell from a tree during a seizure and died from a fractured skull soon after I came to Manu’a. A little girl of about ten who was paralysed from the waist down was said to be suffering from an overdose of salvarsan and to have been normal until she was five or six years old.

Only two individuals, one a married woman of thirty or so, the other a girl of nineteen, discussed in Chapter X, showed a definite neurasthenic constitution. The married woman was barren and spent a great deal of time explaining her barrenness as need of an operation. The presence of an excellent surgeon at the Samoan hospital during the preceding two years had greatly enhanced the prestige of operations. On Tutuila, near the Naval Station, I encountered several middle-aged women obsessed with operations which they had undergone or were soon to undergo. Whether this vogue of modern surgery, by giving it special point, has added to the amount of apparent neurasthenia or not, it is impossible to say.

Of hysterical manifestations, I encountered only one, a girl of fourteen or fifteen with a bad tic in the right side of her face. I only saw her for a few minutes on a journey and was unable to make any investigations. I neither saw nor heard of any cases of hysterical blindness or deafness, nor or any anæsthesias nor paralyses.

I saw no cases of cretinism. There were a few children who had been blind from birth. Blindness, due to the extremely violent methods used by the native practitioners in the treatment of “Samoan conjunctivitis,” is common.

The pathology which is immediately apparent to any visitor in a Samoan village is mainly due to the diseased eyes, elephantiasis, and abscesses and sores of various sorts, but the stigmata of degeneration are almost entirely absent.

There was one albino, a girl of ten, with no albinism in the recorded family history, but as one parent, now dead, had come from another island, this was not at all conclusive data.

APPENDIX V

MATERIALS UPON WHICH THE ANALYSIS IS BASED

This study included sixty-eight girls between the ages of eight and nine and nineteen or twenty—all the girls between these ages in the three villages of Faleasao, Lumā and Siufaga, the three villages on the west coast of the island of Taū in the Manu’a Archipelago of the Samoan Islands.

Owing to the impossibility of obtaining accurate dates of birth except in a very few cases, the ages must all be regarded as approximate. The approximations were based upon the few known ages and the testimony of relatives as to the relative age of the others. For purpose of description and analysis I have divided them roughly into three groups, the children who showed no mammary signs of puberty, twenty-eight in number, ranging in age from eight or nine to about twelve or thirteen; the children who would probably mature within the next year or year and a half, fourteen in number, ranging in age from twelve or thirteen to fourteen or fifteen; and the girls who were past puberty, but who were not yet considered as adults by the community, twenty-five in number, ranging in age from fourteen or fifteen to nineteen or twenty. These two latter groups and eleven of the younger children were studied in detail, making a group of fifty. The remaining fourteen children in the youngest group were studied less carefully as individuals. They formed a large check group in studying play, gang life, the development of brother and sister avoidance, the attitude between the sexes, the difference in the interests and activities of this age and the girls approaching puberty. They also provided abundant material for the study of the education and discipline of the child in the home. The two tables present in summary form the major statistical facts which were gathered about the children specially studied, order of birth, number of brothers and sisters, death or remarriage or divorce of parents, residence of the child, type of household in which the child lived and whether the girl was the daughter of the head of the household or not. The second table relates only to the twenty-five girls past puberty and gives length of time since first menstruation, frequency of menstruation, amount and location of menstrual pain, the presence or absence of masturbation, homosexual and heterosexual experience, and the very pertinent fact of residence or non-residence in the pastor’s household. A survey of the summary analyses joined to these tables will show that these fifty girls present a fairly wide range in family organisation, order of birth, and relation to parents. The group may be fairly considered as representative of the various types of environment, personal and social, which are found in Samoan civilisation as it is to-day.

DISTRIBUTION OF GROUP OF ADOLESCENTS IN RELATION TO FIRST MENSTRUATION

Within last six months 6 Within last year 3 Within last two years 5 Within last three years 7 Within last four years 3 Within last five years 1 —— Total 25

SAMPLE RECORD SHEET FILLED OUT FOR EACH GIRL

Household number Girl’s number Name Age (How estimated) Matai Rank Father Rank Father’s residence Mother Residence of mother Either parent been married before? Economic status of household Church membership of father, mother, guardian Menstruated? Date of commencement? Pain Regularity Estimate of physical development Grade in government school? In pastor’s school? Any knowledge of English? Foreign experience (outside Taū) Physical defects Order of birth? Best friends in order?

_Test Scores_ Religious attitudes Colour naming Rote memory for digits Digit symbol substitution Opposites Picture Interpretation Ball and Field

_Judgments on individuals in the village_ Personality Most beautiful girl Handsomest boy Wisest man Cleverest woman Attitude towards household Worst boy Worst girl Best boy Best girl Attitude towards contemporaries

TABLE I

TABLE SHOWING LENGTH OF TIME SINCE PUBERTY, PERIODICITY, AMOUNT OF PAIN DURING MENSES, MASTURBATION, HOMOSEXUAL EXPERIENCE, HETEROSEXUAL EXPERIENCE, AND RESIDENCE OR NON-RESIDENCE IN PASTOR’S HOUSEHOLD

_Residence _Time Elapsed _Homosexual _Heterosexual in Pastor’s _No._ _Name_ Since Puberty_ _Periodicity_ _Pain_[12] _Masturbation_ Experience_ Experience_ Household_ 1. Luna 3 years monthly abdo. yes yes yes no 2. Masina 3 ” ” ” ” ” ” ” 3. Losa 2 ” ” abdo. back no ” no yes 4. Sona 3 ” semi-monthly ” ” yes ” ” ” 5. Loto 2 months monthly back ” ” ” ” 6. Pala 6 ” ” none ” ” ” no 7. Aso 18 ” semi-monthly back ” no ” ” 8. Tolo 3 ” ” ” extreme ” ” ” ” 9. Lotu 3 years monthly ” ” yes yes ” 10. Tulipa 2 months ” abdo. back ” ” no yes 14. Lita 2 years ” back ” ” ” no 16. Namu 3 ” ” ” ” ” yes ” 17. Ana 2 ” Every three months ” ” ” no yes 18. Lua 3 months monthly ” no no ” no 19. Tolu 4 years semi-monthly ” yes yes yes ” 21. Mala 2 months monthly ” ” no no ” 22. Fala 1 year ” ” ” yes yes ” 23. Lola 1 ” semi-monthly abdo. ” ” ” ” 23ᵃ. Tulipa 3 years monthly back ” ” ” ” 24. Leta 2 months ” none ” ” ” yes 25. Ela 2 years ” extreme ” ” ” ” 27. Mina 5 ” ” ” ” no no ” 28. Moana 4 ” bi-monthly abdo. back ” ” yes no 29. Luina 4 ” monthly extreme no ” no yes 30. Sala 3 ” semi-monthly ” yes ” yes no

[12] Abdomen—pain only there; back—pain only there; extreme—so characterized by girl, never so ill that she couldn’t work.

TABLE II

FAMILY STRUCTURE

_No. Name 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Pre-Ads._

1. Tuna 1 3 x x 2. Vala 1- 3- x x x 3. Pele 3 4 x 4. Timu x x x 5. Suna x x x 6. Pola 3 2 1 x x 7. Tua 1 4 1 x 8. Sina 1 1 2 3 x x 9. Fiva 1 1 3 x 10. Ula 1 1 1 2 x x 11. Siva 1 4 x x

_Midways_ 1. Tasi 1 4 x x x 2. Fitu 1 2 2 x x 3. Mata 1 1 3 x x x 4. Vi 3 3 1 1 x 6. Ipu 2 1 x x x 7. Selu 3 8. Pula 2 1 1 x x 9. Meta 3 1 1 x 10. Maliu 2 2 2 x x 11. Fiatia 3- 2- x x ½ ½ x 13. Tino 1 2 1 x x x 14. Vina 1 2 2 1 x x 15. Talo 2 4 x

_Adolescents_ 1. Luna 2 5 1 x x x x 2. Masina 3 2 2 x x 3. Losa 2 1 x x x 4. Sona 2 x x x 5. Loto 4 1 x x x 6. Pala 3 3 1 x 7. Iso 1 3 1 x x 8. Tolo 1 2 x x 9. Lotu 3 5 x x 10. Tulipa 5 3 14. Lita 4 2 1 x 16. Namu 4 2 x x x 17. Ana 3- x x 18. Lua 7 1 19. Tolu x x x 21. Mala 3 1 x x x 22. Fala 1 3 3 1 x x x 23. Lola 1 2 2 x x x 23ᵃ.Tulipa 2 2 x x x 24. Leta 1 4 x 25. Ela 2 1 1 x x 27. Mina 1 x x x x 28. Moana 1 4 1 1ˣ 1ˣ x x x 29. Luina 1 x x 30. Sala 3 1 x x

KEY TO TABLE ON FAMILY STRUCTURE

_Column_ _Subject_

1 Number of older brothers 2 Number of older sisters 3 Number of younger brothers 4 Number of younger sisters 5 Half brother, _plus_, number older, _minus_, number younger 6 Half sister, _plus_, number older, _minus_, number younger 7 Mother dead 8 Father dead 9 Child of mother’s second marriage 10 Child of father’s second marriage 11 Mother remarried 12 Father remarried 13 Residence with both parents and patrilocal 14 Residence with both parents and matrilocal 15 Residence with mother only 16 Residence with father only 17 Parents divorced 18 Residence with paternal relatives 19 Residence with maternal relatives 20 Father is _matai_ of household 21 Residence in a biological family, i.e., household of parents, children, and no more than two additional relatives.

x in the table means the presence of trait. For example, x in column 7 means that the mother is dead.

ANALYSIS OF TABLE ON FAMILY STRUCTURE

There were among the sixty-eight girls:

7 only children

15 youngest children

5 oldest children

5 with half brother or sister in the same household

5 whose mother was dead

14 whose father was dead

3 who were children of mother’s second marriage

2 children of father’s second marriage

7 whose mother had remarried

5 whose father had remarried

4 residence with both parents patrilocal

8 residence with both parents matrilocal

9 residence with mother only

1 residence with father only

7 parents divorced

12 residence with paternal relatives (without either parent)

6 residence with maternal relatives (without either parent)

15, or 30%, whose fathers were heads of households

12 who belonged to a qualified biological family (i.e., a family which during my stay on the island comprised only two relatives beside the parents and children).

INTELLIGENCE TESTS USED

It was impossible to standardise any intelligence tests and consequently my results are quantitatively valueless. But as I had had some experience in the diagnostic use of tests, I found them useful in forming a preliminary estimate of the girls’ intelligence. Also, the natives have long been accustomed to examinations which the missionary authorities conduct each year, and the knowledge that an examination is in progress makes them respect the privacy of investigator and subject. In this way it was possible for me to get the children alone, without antagonising their parents. Furthermore, the novelty of the tests, especially the colour-naming and picture interpretation tests, served to divert their attention from other questions which I wished to ask them. The results of the tests showed a much narrower range than would be expected in a group varying in age from ten to twenty. Without any standardisation it is impossible to draw any more detailed conclusions. I shall, however, include a few comments about the peculiar responses which the girls made to particular tests, as I believe such comment is useful in evaluating intelligence testing among primitive peoples and also in estimating the possibilities of such testing.

_Tests Used_

Colour Naming. 100 half-inch squares, red, yellow, black and blue.

Rote Memory for Digits. Customary Stanford Binet directions were used.

Digit Symbol Substitution. 72 one-inch figures, square, circle, cross, triangle and diamond.

Opposites. 23 words. Stimulus words: fat, white, long, old, tall, wise, beautiful, late, night, near, hot, win, thick, sweet, tired, slow, rich, happy, darkness, up, inland, inside, sick.

Picture Interpretation. Three reproductions from the moving picture _Moana_, showing, (_a_) Two children who had caught a cocoanut crab by smoking it out of the rocks above them, (_b_) A canoe putting out to sea after bonito as evidenced by the shape of the canoe and the position of the crew, (_c_) A Samoan girl sitting on a log eating a small live fish which a boy, garlanded and stretched on the ground at her feet, had given her.

Ball and Field. Standard-sized circle.

Standard directions were given throughout in all cases entirely in Samoan. Many children, unused to such definitely set tasks, although all are accustomed to the use of slate and of pencil and paper, had to be encouraged to start. The ball and field test was the least satisfactory as in over fifty per cent of the cases the children followed an accidental first line and simply completed an elaborate pattern within the circle. When this pattern happened by accident to be either the Inferior or Superior solution, the child’s comment usually betrayed the guiding idea as æsthetic rather than as an attempt to solve the problem. The children whom I was led to believe to be most intelligent, subordinated the æsthetic consideration to the solution of the problem, but the less intelligent children were sidetracked by their interest in the design they could make much more easily than are children in our civilisation. In only two cases did I find a rote memory for digits which exceeded six digits; two girls completing seven successfully. The Samoan civilisation puts the slightest of premiums upon rote memory of any sort. On the digit-symbol test they were slow to understand the point of the test and very few learned the combinations before the last line of the test sheet. The picture interpretation test was the most subject to vitiation through a cultural factor; almost all of the children adopted some highly stylized form of comment and then pursued it through one balanced sentence after another: “Beautiful is the boy and beautiful is the girl. Beautiful is the garland of the boy and beautiful is the wreath of the girl,” etc. In the two pictures which emphasised human beings no discussion could be commenced until the question of the relationship of the characters had been ascertained. The opposites test was the one which they did most easily, a natural consequence of a vivid interest in words, an interest which leads them to spend most of their mythological speculation upon punning explanations of names.

CHECK LIST USED IN INVESTIGATION OF EACH GIRL’S EXPERIENCE

In order to standardise this investigation I made out a questionnaire which I filled out for each girl. The questions were not asked consecutively but from time to time I added one item of information after another to the record sheets. The various items fell into the loose groupings indicated below.

_Agricultural proficiency._ Weeding, selecting leaves for use in cooking, gathering bananas, taro, breadfruit, cutting cocoanuts for copra.

_Cooking._ Skinning bananas, grating cocoanut, preparing breadfruit, mixing _palusami_,[13] wrapping _palusami_, making _tafolo_,[14] making banana _poi_, making arrow-root pudding.

_Fishing._ Daylight reef fishing, torchlight reef fishing, gathering _lole_, catching small fish on reef, using the “come hither” octopus stick, gathering large crabs.

_Weaving._ Balls, pin-wheels, baskets to hold food gifts, carrying baskets, woven blinds, floor mats, fishing baskets, food trays, thatching mats, roof bonetting mats, plain fans, pandanus floor mats, bed mats (number of designs known and number of mats completed), fine mats, dancing skirts, sugar-cane thatch.

_Bark cloth making._ Gathering paper mulberry wands, scraping the bark, pounding the bark, using a pattern board, tracing patterns free hand.

_Care of clothing._ Washing, ironing, ironing starched clothes, sewing, sewing on a machine, embroidering.

_Athletics._ Climbing palm trees, swimming, swimming in the swimming hole within the reef,[15] playing cricket.

_Kava making._ Pounding the kava root, distributing the kava, making the kava, shaking out the hibiscus bark strainer.

_Proficiency in foreign things._ Writing a letter, telling time, reading a calendar, filling a fountain pen.

_Dancing._

_Reciting the family genealogy._

_Index of knowledge of the courtesy language._ Giving the chiefs’ words for: arm, leg, food, house, dance, wife, sickness, talk, sit. Giving courtesy phrases of welcome, when passing in front of some one.

_Experience of life and death._ Witnessing of birth, miscarriage, intercourse, death, Cæsarian post-mortem operation.

_Marital preferences_, rank, residence, age of marriage, number of children.

_Index of knowledge of the social organisation._ Reason for Cæsarian post-mortem, proper treatment of a chief’s bed, exactions of the brother and sister taboo, penalties attached to cocoanut _tapui_,[16] proper treatment of a kava bowl, the titles and present incumbents of the titles of the _Manaia_ of Lumā, Siufaga and Faleasao, the Taupo of Fitiuta, the meaning of the _Fale Ula_[17], the _Umu Sa_,[18] the _Mua o le taule’ale’a_,[19] the proper kinds of property for a marriage exchange, who was the high chief of Lumā, Siufaga, Faleasao and Fitiuta, and what constituted the Lafo[20] of the talking chief.

[13] _Palusami_—a pudding prepared from grated cocoanut, flavoured with red hot stone, mixed with sea water, and wrapped in taro leaves, from which the acrid stem has been scorched, then in a banana leaf, finally in a breadfruit leaf.

[14] _Tafolo_—a pudding made of breadfruit with a sauce of grated cocoanut.

[15] Swimming in the hole within the reef required more skill than swimming in still water; it involved diving and also battling with a water level which changed several feet with each great wave.

[16] _Tapui._ The hieroglyphic signs used by the Samoans to protect their property from thieves. The _tapui_ calls down an automatic magical penalty upon the transgressor. The penalty for stealing from property protected by the cocoanut _tapui_ is boils.

[17] The ceremonial name of the council house of the Tui Manu’a.

[18] The sacred oven of food and the ceremony accompanying its presentation and the presentation of fine mats to the carpenters who have completed a new house.

[19] The ceremonial call of the young men of the village upon a visiting maiden.

[20] The ceremonial perquisite of the talking chief, usually a piece of tapa, occasionally a fine mat.

GLOSSARY OF NATIVE TERMS USED IN THE TEXT

Aumaga (’aumāga)—the organisation of untitled men in each Samoan village.

Aualuma—the organisation of unmarried girls past puberty, wives of untitled men and widows.

Afafine—daughter (man speaking).

Aiga—relative.

Atali’i—son (man speaking).

Avaga—elopement.

Fa’alupega—the courtesy phrases, recited in formal speeches, which embody the social pattern of each village.

Fale—house.

Faletua—“she who sits in the back of the house.” The courtesy term for a chief’s wife.

Fono—a meeting. Specifically the organisation of titled men of a village, district or island.

Fitafita—a member of the native marine corps.

Ifo—to lower oneself to some one whom one has offended or injured.

Ifoga—the act of doing so.

Lavalava—a loin cloth, fastened by a twist in the material at the waist.

Lole—a sort of jelly fish; applied by the natives to candy.

Malaga—a travelling party; a journey.

Manaia—the heir-apparent of the principal chief; the leader of the Aumāga; the heir of any important chief whose title carries the privilege of giving a manaia title to his heir.

Matai—the holder of a title; the head of a household.

Moetotolo—surreptitious rape.

Moni—true, real.

Musu—unwillingness, obstinacy towards any course of action.

Olomatua—old woman.

Papalagi—white men; literally, “sky bursters.” Foreign.

Pua—the frangipani tree.

Soa—a companion in circumcision; an ambassador in love affairs.

Soafafine—a woman ambassador in love affairs.

Siva—to dance; a dance.

Tama—a child, a son (woman speaking).

Tamā—father.

Tamafafine—a child of the distaff side of the house.

Tamatane—a child of the male line.

Tapa—bark cloth.

Taule’ale’a—a member of the Aumaga; an untitled man.

Taupo—the village ceremonial hostess; the girl whom a high chief has honoured with a title and a distribution of property.

Tausi—the courtesy term for the wife of a talking chief; literally, “to care for.”

Tei—a younger sibling.

Teine—a girl.

Teinetiti—a little girl.

Tinā—mother.

Toa’ina—an old man.

Tuafafine—female sibling of a male.

Tuagane—male sibling of a female.

Tulafale—a talking chief.

Uso—sibling of the same sex.

NOTE ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF SAMOAN WORDS

The vowels are all pronounced as in Italian. _G_ is always pronounced like NG. The Glottal stop is indicated by a (’).

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes:

- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). - Text enclosed by pluses is in small caps (+small caps+). - Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.