Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation

by Mead, Margaret, 1901-1978

  The dancing child is almost always a very different / person from her everyday self. After long acquaint- (' ance it is sometimes possible to guess the type of dance which a particular girl will do. This is particularly ' easy in the case of obviously tom-boy girls, but one is continually fooled by the depths of sophistication in the dancing of some pensive, dull child, or the lazy grace of some noisy little hoodlum.

  Formal dancing displays are a recognised social entertainment and the highest courtesy a chief can offer his guest is to have his taupo dance for him. So likewise the boys dance after they have been tattooed, the manaia dances when he goes to woo his bride, the bride dances at her wedding. In the midnight conviviality of a malaga the dance often becomes flagrantly obscene and definitely provocative in character, but both of these are special developments of less importance than the function of informal dancing in the development of individuality and the compensation for repression of personality In other spheres of life.

  THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS PERSONALITY

  THE ease with which personality differences can be adjusted by a change of residence prevents the Samoans from pressing one another too hard. Their evaluations of personality are g curious mixture of caution and fatalism. There is one word musu which expresses unwillingness and intractability, wTiether in the mistress who refuses to welcome a hitherto welcome lover, the chief who refuses to lend his kava bowl, the baby who won't go to bed, or the talking chief who won't go on a malaga. The appearance of a musu attitude is treated with almost superstitious respect. Lovers will prescribe formulae for the treatment of a mistress, "lest she become musu" and the behaviour of the suppliant is carefully orientated in respect to this mysterious undesira-bility. The feeling seems to be not that one is dealing with an individual in terms of his peculiar preoccupations in order to assure a successful outcome of a personal relationship, appealing now to vanity, now to fear, now to a desire for power, but rather that one is using one or another of a series of potent practices to prevent a mysterious and widespread psychological phenomenon from arising. Once this attitude has appeared, a Samoan habitually gives up the struggle without more

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  THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS PERSONALITY

  detailed inquiry and with a minimum of complaint. This fatalistic acceptance of an inexplicable attitude makes for an odd incuriousness about motives. The Samoans are not in the least insensitive to differences between people. But their full appreciation of these differences is blurred by their conception of an obstinate disposition, a tendency to take umbrage, irascibility, contra-suggestibility, and particular biases as just so many roads to one attitude— musu.

  This lack of curiosity about motivation is furthered by the conventional acceptance of a completely ambiguous answer to any personal question. The most characteristic reply to any question about one's motivation is Ta iloy "search me," sometimes made more specific by the addition of "I don't know." * This is considered to be an adequate and acceptable answer in ordinary conversation although its slight curtness bars it out from ceremonious occasions. So deep seated is the habit of using this disclaimer that I had to put a taboo upon its use by the children in order to get the simplest question answered directly. When this ambiguous rejoinder is combined with a statement that one is musu, the result is the final unrevealing statement, "Search me, why, I don't want to, that's all." Plans will be abandoned, children refuse to live at home, marriages broken off. Village gossip is interested in the fart but shrugs its shoulders before the motives^

  There is one curious exception to this attitude. If

  ♦See Appendix I, page 253.

  COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA

  an Individual falls ill, the explanation is sought first in the attitudes of his relatives. Anger in the heart of a relative, especially in that of a sister^ Is most potent in producing evil and so the whole household is convened, a kava ceremony held and each relative solemnly enjoined to confess what anger there is in his heart against the sick person. Such injunctions are met either by solemn disclaimers or by detailed confessions: "Last week my brother came into the house and ate all the food, and I was angry all day"j or "My brother and I had a quarrel and my father took my brother's side and I was angry at my father for his favouritism towards my brother." But this special ceremony only serves to throw into strong relief the prevalent unspeculative attitude towards motivation. I once saw a girl leave a week-end fishing party immediately upon arrival at our destination and insist upon returning in the heat of the day the six miles to the village. But her companions ventured no hypothesis j she was simply 'musu to the party.

  How great a protection for the Individual such an attitude is will readily be seen when it is remembered how little privacy any one has. Chief or child, he dwells habitually in a house with at least half a dozen other people. His possessions are simply rolled in a mat, placed on the rafters or piled carelessly into a basket or a chest. A chief's personal property is likely to be respected, at least by the women of the household, but no one else can be sure from hour to hour of

  THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS PERSONALITY

  his nominal possessions. The tapa which a woman spent three weeks in making will be given away to a visitor during her temporary absence. The rings may be begged off her fingers at any moment. Privacy of possessions is virtually impossible. In the same way, all of an individual's acts are public property. An occasional love affair may slip through the fingers of gossip, and an occasional moetotolo go uncaught, but there is a very general cognisance on the part of the whole village of the activity of every single inhabitant. I shall never forget the outraged expression with which an informant told me that nobody, actually nobody at all, knew who was the father of Fa'amoana's baby. The oppressive atmosphere of the small town is all about them J in an hour children will have made a dancing song of their most secret acts. This glaring publicity is compensated for by a violent gloomy secre-tiveness. Where a Westerner would say, "Yes, I love him but you'll never know how far it went," a Samoan would say, "Yes, of course I lived with him, but you'll never know whether I love him or hate him."

  The Samoan language has no regular comparative. There are several clumsy ways of expressing comparison by using contrast, "This is good and that is bad"j or by the locution, "And next to him there comes, etc." Comparisons are not habitual although in the rigid social structure of the community, relative rank is very keenly recognised. But relative goodness, relative beauty, relative wisdom are unfamiliar formalisations

  COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA

  to them. I tried over and over again to get judgments as to who was the wisest or the best man of the community. An informant's first impulse was always to answer: "Oh, they are all good"j or, "There are so many wise ones." Curiously enough, there seemed to be less difficulty in distinguishing the vicious than the virtuous. This is probably due to the Missionary influence which if it has failed to give the native a conviction of Sin, has at least provided him with a list of sins. Although I often met with a preliminary response, "There are so many bad boys"j it was usually qualified spontaneously by "But so-and-so is the worst because he . . ." Ugliness and viciousness were more vivid and unusual attributes of personality; beauty, wisdom, and kindness were taken for granted.

  In an account given of another person the sequence of traits mentioned followed a set and objective pattern: sex, age, rank, relationship, defects, activities. Spontaneous comment upon character or personality were unusual. So a girl describes her grandmother: "Lauuli? Oh, she is an old woman, very old, she's my father's mother. She's a widow with one eye. She is too old to go inland but sits in the house all day. She makes tapa." * This completely unanalytical account is only modified in the case of exceptionally in^.elligent adults-who are asked to make judgments.

  In the native classification attitudes are qualified by four terms, good and bad, easy and difficult, paired. A

  * For additional character
sketches see Appendix I, page 253.

  THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS PERSONALITY

  good child will be said to listen easily or to act well, a bad child to listen with difficulty or act badly. "Easy" and "with difficulty" are judgments of characterj "good" and "bad" of behaviour. So that good or bad behaviour have become, explained in terms of ease or difficulty, to be regarded as an inherent capability of the individual. As we would say a person sang easily or swam without effort, the Samoan will say one obeys easily, acts respectfully, "easily," reserving the terms "good" or "well" for objective approbation. So a chief who was commenting on the bad behaviour of his brother's daughter remarked, "But Tui's children always did listen with difficulty," with as casual an acceptance of an irradicable defect as if he had said, "But John always did have poor eye sight."

  Such an attitude towards conduct is paralleled by an equally unusual attitude towards the expression of emotion. The expressions of emotions are classified as "caused" and "uncaused." The emotional, easily upset, m.oody person is described as laughing without cause, crying without cause, showing anger or pugna-ciousness without cause. The expression "to be very angry without cause" does not carry the implication of quick temper, which is expressed by the word "to anger easily," nor the connotation of a disproportionate response to a legitimate stimulus, but means literally to be angry without cause, or freely, an emotional state without any apparent stimulus whatsoever. Such judgments are the nearest that the Samoan approaches to ,... [127]

  COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA

  evaluation of temperament as opposed to character. The well-integrated individual who approximates closely to the attitudes of his age and sex group is not accused of laughing, crying, or showing anger without cause. Without inquiry it is assumed that he has good typical reasons for a behaviour which would be scrutinised and scorned in the case of the temperamental deviant. And always excessive emotion, violent preferences, strong allegiances are disallowed. The Samoan preference is for a middle course, a moderate amount o± feeling, a discreet expression of a reasonable and balanced attitude. Those who care greatly are always said to care without cause.

  The one most disliked trait in a contemporary is expressed by the term fiasili, literally "desiring to be highest," more idiomatically, "stuck up." This is the comment of the age mate where an older person would use the disapproving tautala laititiy "presuming above one's age." It is essentially the resentful comment of those who are ignored, neglected, left behind upon those who excel them, scorn them, pass them by. As a term of reproach it is neither as dreaded nor as resented as the tautala laititl because envy is felt to play a part in the taunt.

  In the casual conversations, the place of idle speculation about motivation is taken by explanations in terms of physical defect or objective misfortune, thus "Sila is crying over in that house. Well, Sila is deaf." "Tulipa is angry at her brother. Tulipa's mother went

  THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS PERSONALITY

  to Tutuila last week." Although these statements have the earmarks of attempted explanations they are really onl^_conversational habits._._The physical defect or recent incident, is not specifically invoked but merely mentioned with slightly greater and more deprecatory emphasis. The whole preoccupation is with the individual as an actor, and the motivations peculiar to his psychology are left an unplumbed mystery.

  Judgments are always made in terms of age groups, from the standpoints of the group of the speaker and the age of the person judged. A young boy will not be regarded as an intelligent or stupid, attractive or unattractive, clumsy or skilful person. He is a bright little boy of nine who runs errands efficiently and is wise enough to hold his tongue when his elders are present, or a promising youth of eighteen who can make excellent speeches in the Aumagay lead a fishing expedition with discretion and treat the chiefs with the respect which is due to them, or a wise matai, whose words are few and well chosen and who is good at weaving eel traps. The virtues of the child are not the virtues of the adult. And the judgment of the speaker is similarly influenced by age, so that the relative estimation of character varies also. Pre-adolescent boys and girls will vote that boy and girl worst who are most pugnacious, irascible, contentious, rowdy. Young people from sixteen to twenty shift their censure from the rowdy and bully to the licentious, the moetotolo among the boys, the notoriously promiscuous among the

  COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA

  girls j while adults pay very little attention to sex offenders and stress instead the inept, the impudent and the disobedient among the young, and the lazy, the stupid, the quarrelsome and the unreliable as the least desirable characters among the adults. When an adult is speaking the standards of conduct are graded in this fashion: small children should keep quiet, wake up early, obey, work hard and cheerfully, play with children of their own sexj young people should work industriously and skilfully, not be presuming, marry discreetly, be loyal to their relatives, not carry tales, nor be trouble makers j while adults should be wise, peaceable, serene, generous, anxious for the good prestige of their village and conduct their lives with all good form and decorum. No prominence is given to the subtler facts of intelligence and temperament. Preference between the sexes is given not to the arrogant, the flippant, the courageous, but to the quiet, the demure boy or girl who "speaks softly and treads lightly."

  THE EXPERIENCE AND INDIVIDUALITY OF THE AVERAGE

  GIRL *

  WITH a background of knowledge about Samoan custom, of the way in which a ch'ld is educated, of the claims which the community makes upon children and young people, of the attitude towards sex and personality, we come to the tale of the group of girls with whom I spent many months, the group of girls between ten and twenty years of age who lived in the three little villages on the lee side of the island of Tau. In their lives as a group, in their responses as individuals, lies the answer to the question: What is coming of age like in Samoa?

  The reader will remember that the principal activity of the little girls was baby-tending. They could also do reef fishing, weave a ball and make a pin-wheel, climb a cocoanut tree, keep themselves afloat in a swimming hole which changed its level fifteen feet with every wave, grate off the skin of a breadfruit or taro, sweep the sanded yard of the house, carry water from the sea, do simple washing and dance a somewhat individualised siva. Their knowledge of the biology of

  * See Tables and Summaries in Appendix IV.

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  COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA

  life and death was overdeveloped in proportion to their knowledge of the organisation of their society or any of the niceties of conduct prescribed for their elders. They were in a position which would be paralleled in our culture if a child had seen birth and death before she was taught not to pass a knife blade first or how to make change for a quarter. None of these children could speak the courtesy language, even in its most elementary forms, their knowledge being confined to four or five words of invitation and acceptance. This ignorance effectually barred them from the conversations of their elders upon all ceremonial occasions. Spying upon a gathering of chiefs would have been an unrewarding experience. They knew nothing of the social organisation of the village beyond knowing which adults were heads of families and which adult men and women were married. They used the relationship terms loosely and without any real understanding, often substituting the term, "sibling of my own sex," where a sibling of opposite sex was meant, and when they applied the term "brother" to a young uncle, they did so without the clarity of their elders who, while using the term in an age-grouping sense, realised perfectly that the "brother" was really a mother's or father's brother. In their use of language their immaturity was chiefly evidenced by a lack of familiarity with the courtesy language, and by much confusion in the use of the dual and of the inclusive and exclusive pronouns. These present about the same difficulty in their lan-

  EXPERIENCE OF THE AVERAGE GIRL

  guage as the use of a nominative after the verb "to be" in English. They had also not acquired a mastery
of the processes for manipulating the vocabulary by the use of very freely combining prefixes and suffixes. A child will use the term fa'a Samoay "in Samoan fashion," or fa'atamay tomboy, but fail to use the convenient fa'a in making a new and less stereotyped comparison, using instead some less convenient linguistic circumlocution.*

  All of these children had seen birth and death. They had seen many dead bodies. They had watched miscarriage and peeked under the arms of the old women who were washing and commenting upon the undeveloped foetus. There was no convention of sending children of the family away at such times, although the hordes of neighbouring children were scattered with a shower of stones if any of the older women could take time from the more absorbing events to hurl them. But the feeling here was that children were noisy and troublesome j there was no desire to protect them from shock or to keep them in ignorance. About half of the children had seen a partly developed foetus, which the Samoans fear will otherwise be born as an avenging ghost, cut from a woman's dead body in the open grave. If shock is the result of early experiences with birth, death, or sex activities, it should surely be manifest here in this postmortem Csesarian where grief for the dead, fear of death, a sense of horror and a dread of

  *See Appendix I, page 256.

  COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA

  contamination from contact with the dead, the open, unconcealed operation and the sight of the distorted, repulsive foetus all combine to render the experience indelible. An only slightly less emotionally charged experience was the often witnessed operation of cutting open any dead body to search out the cause of death. These operations performed in the shallow open grave, beneath a glaring noon-day sun, with a frighted, excited crowd watching in horrified fascination, are hardly orderly or unemotional initiations into the details of biology and death, and yet they seem to leave no bad effects on the children's emotional makeup. Possibly the adult attitude that these are horrible but perfectly natural, non-unique occurrences, forming a legitimate part of the child's experience, may sufficiently account for the lack of bad results. Children take an intense interest in life and death, and are more proportionately obsessed by it than are their adults who divide their horror between the death of a young neighbour in child-bed and the fact that the high chief has been insulted by some breach of etiquette in the neighbouring village. The intricacies of the social life are a closed book to the child and a correspondingly fascinating field of exploration in later life, while the facts of life and death are shorn of all mystery at an early age. In matters of sex the ten-year-olds are equally sophisticated, although they witness sex activities only surreptitiously, since all expressions of affection are rigorously barred in public. A couple whose wedding