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THE EDUCATION OF THE SAMOAN CHILD
tern board or by free hand drawing is left for the more experienced adult. . Throughout this more or less systematic period of education, the girls maintain a very nice balance between a reputation for the necessary minimum of knowledge and a virtuosity which would make too . heavy demands. A girl's chances of marriage are '^^yyj.^ badly damaged if it gets about the village that she is ^ lazy and inept in domestic tasks. But after these first stages have been completed the girl marks time technically for three or four years. She does the routine weaving, especially of the Venetian blinds and carrying baskets. She helps with the plantation work and the cooking, she weaves a very little on her fine mat. But she thrusts virtuosity away from her as she thrusts away every other sort of responsibility with the in- , variable comment, "Laititi a'u" ("I am but young"). All of her interest is expended on clandestine sex ad- .^ ventures, and she is content to do routine tasks as, to a certain extent, her brother is also.
But the seventeen-year-old boy is not left passively to his own devices. , He has learned the rudiments of fishing, he can take a dug-out canoe over the reef safely, or manage the stern paddle in a bonito boat. He can plant taro or transplant cocoanut, husk cocoa-nuts on a stake and cut the meat out with one deft quick turn of the knife. Now at seventeen or eighteen he is thrust into the Aumaga, the society of the young
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COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
men and the older men without titles, the group that is called, not in euphuism but in sober fact, "the strength of the village." Here he is badgered into efficiency by rivalry, precept and example. The older chiefs who supervise the activities of the Aumaga gaze equally sternly upon any backslidings and upon any undue precocity. The prestige of his group is ever being called into account by the Aumaga of the neighbouring villages. His fellows ridicule and persecute the boy who fails to appear when any group activity is on foot, whether work for the village on the plantations, or fishing, or cooking for the chiefs, or play in the form of a ceremonial call upon some visiting maiden. Furthermore, the youth is given much more stimulus to learn and also a greater variety of occupations are open to him. There is no specialisation among women, except in medicine and mid-wifery, both the prerogatives of very old women who teach their arts to their middle-aged daughters and nieces. The only other vocation is that of the wife of an official orator/ and no girl will prepare herself for this one type of marriage which demands special knowledge, for she has no guarantee that she will marry a man of this class.
For the boy it is different. He hopes that some day he will hold a matal name, a name which will make him a member of the FonOy the assembly of headmen, which will give him a right to drink kava with chiefs, to work with chiefs rather than with the young men,
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THE EDUCATION OF THE SAMOAN CHILD
to sit inside the house, even though his new title is only of "between the posts" rank, and not of enough importance to give him a right to a post for his back. But very seldom is he absolutely assured of getting such a name. Each family hold several of these titles which they confer upon the most promising youths in the whole family connection. He has many rivals. They also are in the Aumaga. He must always pit himself against them in the group activities. There are also several types of activities in one of which he must specialise. He must become a house-builder, a fisherman, an orator or a wood carver. Proficiency in some technique must set him off a little from his fellows. * Fishing prowess means immediate rewards in the shape of food gifts to offer to his sweetheart; without such gifts his advances will be scorned. Skill in house-building means wealth and status, for a young man who is a skilled carpenter must be treated as courteously as a chief and addressed with the chief's language, the elaborate set of honorific words used to people of rank. And with this goes the continual de- ■ mand that he should not be too efficient, too outstanding, too precocious. He must never excel his fellows^ by more than a little. He must neither arouse their hatred nor the disapproval of his elders who are far readier to encourage and excuse the laggard than to condone precocity. And at the same time he shares his sister's reluctance to accept responsibility, and if he should excel gently, not too obviously, he has good
COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
chances of being made a chief. If he is sufficiently talented, the Fono itself may deliberate, search out a Vacant title to confer upon him and call him in that he may sit with the old men and learn wisdom. And yet so well recognised is the unwillingness of the young men to respond to this honour, that the provision is always made, "And if the young man runs away, then never shall he be made a chief, but always he must sit outside the house with the young men, preparing and serving the food of the matais with whom he may not sit in the FonoJ*' Still more pertinent are the chances of his relationship group bestowing a matai name upon the gifted young man. And a matai he wishes to be, some day, some far-off day when his limbs have lost a little of their suppleness and his heart the love of fun and of dancing. As one chief of twenty-seven told me: "I have been a chief only four years and look, my hair is grey, although in Samoa grey hair comes very slowly, not in youth, as it comes to the white man. But always, I must act as if I were old. I must walk gravely and with a measured step. I may not dance except upon most solemn occasions, neither may I play games with the young men. Old men of sixty are my companions and watch my every word, lest I make a mistake. Thirty-one people live in my household. For them I must plan, I must find them food and clothing, settle their disputes, arrange their marriages. There is no one in my whole family who dares to scold me or even to address me familiarly
THE EDUCATION OF THE SAMOAN CHILD
by my first name. It is hard to be so young and yet to be a chief." And the old men shake their heads and agree that it is unseemly for one to be a chief so young.
■ The operation of natural ambition is further vitiated by the fact that the young man who is made a matai will not be the greatest among his former associates, but the youngest and greenest member of the Fono. And no longer may he associate familiarly with his old companions J a matai must associate only with maiais,) must work beside them in the bush and sit and tall quietly with them in the evening.
And so the boy is faced by a far more difficult dilemma than the girl. He dislikes responsibility, but he wishes to excel in his group j skill will hasten the day when he is made a chief, yet he receives censure and ridicule if he slackens his efforts; but he will be scolded if he proceeds too rapidly; yet if he would win a sweetheart, he must have prestige among hiS; fellows. And conversely, his social prestige is increased by his amorous exploits. v^ ^J So while the girl rests upon her "pass" proficiency, ^ the boy is spurred to greater efforts. A boy is shy of / a girl who does not have these proofs of efficiency and is known to be stupid and unskilled; he is afraid he may come to want to marry her. Marrying a girl without proficiency would be a most imprudent step and involve an endless amount of wrangling with his family. So the girl who is notoriously inept must take her
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COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
lovers from among the casual, the jaded, and the married who are no longer afraid that their senses will be-trp,y them into an imprudent marriage. C But the seventeen-year-old girl does not wish to niarry—not yet. It is better to live as a girl with no b. responsibility, and a rich variety of emotional experience. This is the best period of her lifeJ There are as many beneath her whom she may bully as there are others above her to tyrannise over her. What she loses in prestige, she gains in freedom. She has very little baby-tending to do. Her eyes do not ache from weaving nor does her back break from bending all day over the tapa board. The long expeditions after fish and food and weaving materials give ample opportunities for rendezvous. Proficiency would mean more work, • more confining work, and earlier marriage, and mar-
y riage is the inevitable to be deferred as long as possible. .
; J
THE SAMOAN HOUSEHOLD
A SAMOAN yillage is-made up of some thirty to forty households, each of which is presided over by a headman called a ly^ai- These headmen hold either chiefly titles or the titles of talking chiefs, who are the official orators, spokesmen and ambassadors of chiefs. In a formal village assembly each f?i'atai has his place, and represents and is responsible for all the members of his household. These households include all the individuals who live for any length of time under the authority and protection of a common Tnatai. Their composition varies from the biological family consisting of parents and children only, to households of fifteen and twenty people who are all related to the matai or to his wife by blood, marriage or adoption, but who often have no close relationship to each other. The adopted members of a household are usually but not necessarily distant relatives.
Widows and widowers, especially when they are childless, usually return to their blood relatives, but a married couple may live with the relatives of either one. Such a household is not necessarily a close residential unit, but may be scattered over the village in three or
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COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
four houses. No one living permanently in another village is counted as a member of the household, which is strictly a local unit. Economically, the household is also a unit, for all work upon the plantations under the supervision of the mata± who jn turn parcels out to them food and other necessities.
Within the household,,age rather than relationship gives disciplinary authority. The matai exercises nominal and usually real authority over every individual under his protection, even over his father and mother,* This control is, of course, modified by personality differences, always carefully tempered,-' however, by a ceremonious acknowledgment of his position. The newest baby born into such a household is subject to every individual in it, and his position improves no whit with age until a younger child appears upon the scene. But in most households the position of youngest is a highly temporary one. Nieces and nephews or destitute young cousins come to swell the ranks of the household and at adolescence a girl stands virtually in the middle v/ith as many individuals who must obey her as there are persons to whom she owes obedience. Where increased efficiency and increased self-consciousness would perhaps have made her obstreperous and restless in a differently organised family, here she has ample outlet for a growing sense of authority.
This development is perfectly regular. A girPs marriage makes a minimum, of difference in this respect, except in so far as her own children increase
THE SAMOAN HOUSEHOLD
most pertinently the supply of agreeably docile subordinates. But the girls who remain unmarried even beyond their early twenties are in nowise less highly regarded or less responsible than their married sisters. This tendency to make the classifying principle age, rather than married state, is reinforced outside the home by the fact that the wives of untitled men and all unmarried girls past puberty are classed together in the ceremonial organisation of the village.
Relatives in other households also play a role in the children's lives. ..Any older relative has a right to demand personal service from younger relatives, a right to criticise their conduct and to interfere in their affairs. Thus a little girl may escape alone down to the beach to bathe only to be met by an older cousin who sets her washing or caring for a baby or to fetch some cocoanut to scrub the clothes. ' So closely is the dail^ life bound up with this universal servitude and so numerous are the acknowledged relationships in the name of which service can be exacted, that for the children an hour's escape from surveillance is almost impossible.^
This loose but demanding relationship group has its compensations also. Within it a child of three can wander safely and come to no harm, can be sure of finding food and drink, a sheet to wrap herself up in for a nap, a kind hand to dry casual tears and bind up her wounds. Any small children who are missing when night falls, are simply "sought among their kinsfolk," and a baby whose mother has gone inland to
COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
work on the plantation is passed from hand to hand for the length of the village.
The ranking by age is disturbed in only a few cases. fin each village one or two high chiefs have the hereditary right to name some girl of their household as its taufOy the ceremonial princess of the house. The girl who at fifteen or sixteen is made a taufo is snatched from her age group and sometimes from her immediate family also and surrounded by a glare of prestige] The older women of the village accord her courtesy titles, her immediate family often exploits her position for their personal ends and in return show great consideration for her wishes. But as there are only two or three tau-pos in a village, their unique position serves to emphasise rather than to disprove the general status of young girls.
Coupled with this enormous diffusion of authority goes a fear of overstraining the relationship bond, which expresses itself in an added respect for personality. The very number of her captors is the girPs protection, for does one press her too far, she has but to change her residence to the home of some more complacent relative. It is possible to classify the different households open to her as those with hardest work, least chaperonage, least scolding, largest or least number of contemporaries, fewest babies, best food, etc. Few children live continuously in one household, but are always testing out other possible residences. And this can be done under the guise of visits and with
JHE SAMOAN HOUSEHOLD
no suggestion of truancy. But the minute that the mildest annoyance grows up at home, the possibility of flight moderates the discipline and alleviates the child's sense of dependency. No Samoan child, except the tawpOy or the thoroughly delinquent, ever has to deal with a feeling of being trapped. There are always relatives-to whom one can flee. This is the invariable answer which a Samoan gives when some familial impasse is laid before him. "But she will go to some other relative." And theoretically the supply of relatives is inexhaustible. Unless the vagrant has committed some very serious offence like incest, it is only necessary formally to depart from the bosom of one's household. A girl whose father has beaten her over severely in the morning will be found living in haughty sanctuary, two hundred feet away, in a different household. So cherished is this system of consanguineous refuge, that an untitled man or a man of lesser rank wuITeard the nobler relative who comes to demand a runaway child. With great politeness and endless expressions of conciliation, he will beg his noble chief to return to his noble home and remain there quietly until his noble anger is healed against his noble child.
The most important relationships * within a Samoan -c^ household which influence the lives of the young people are the relationships between the boys and girls who call each other "brother" and "sister," whether by blood, marriage or adoption, and the relationship betweer younger and older relatives. The stress upon
* See / ppendix, page 249.
COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
the sex difference between contemporaries and the emphasis on relative age are amply explained by the conditions of family life. Relatives of opposite sex have a most rigid_ code^o^ etiguettejir^scribed for all their contacts with each other. After they have reached years of discretion, nine or ten years of age in this case, they may not touch each other, sit close together, eat together, address each other familiarly, or mention any salacious matter in each other's presence. They may not remain in any house, except their own, together, unless half the village is gathered there. They may not walk together, use each other's possessions, dance on the same floor, or take part in any of the same small group activities. This strict^atvoidance applies to all individuals of the opposite sex within five years above or below one's own age with whom one was reared or to whom one acknowledges relationship by blood or marriage. The conformance to this brother and sister taboo begins when the younger of the two children feels "ashamed" at the elder's touch and continues until old age when the decrepit, toothless pair of old siblings may again sit on the same mat a
nd not feel ashamed.
Teiy the word for younger relative, stresses the other most emotionally charged relationship. The first maternal enthusiasm of a girl is never expended upon her own children but upon some younger relative. And it is the girls and women who use this term most, continuing to cherish it after they and the younger ones
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THE SAMOAN HOUSEHOLD
to whom It is applied are full grown. The younger child in turn expends its enthusiasm upon a still younger one without manifesting any excessive affection for the fostering elders.
The word aiga is used roughly to cover all relationships by blood, marriage and adoption, :ind the emotional tone seems to be the same in each case. Relationship by marriage is counted only as long as an actual marri.ige connects two kinship groups. If the marriage is broken in any way, by desertion, divorce, or death, the relationship is dissolved and members of the two families are free to marry each other. If the marriage left any children, a reciprocal relationship exists between the two households as long as the child lives, for the mother's family will always have to contribute one kind of property, the father's family another, for occasions when property must be given away in the name of the child.
A relative is regarded as some one upon whom one has a multitude of claims and to whom one owes a mul- ^ titude of obligations. From a relative one may demand food, clothing, and shelter, or assistance in a feud. Refusal of such a demand brands one as stingy and lacking in human kindness, the virtue most esteemed among ^ _the Samoans. No definite repayment Is made at the time such services are given, except In the case of the distribution of food to all those who share In a family enterprise. But careful count of the value of the prop- / erty given and of the service rendered Is kept and a
Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation Page 4
