The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume 2 (of 3)

§ 3. Houses, Agriculture, and Industries

Like all the Polynesians, the Samoans are not nomadic, but live in settled villages. The typical Samoan house is commonly described as oval or elliptical, though in fact it would seem to be of oblong shape with semicircular ends. But many houses were circular in shape, and with their conical thatched roofs resembled gigantic beehives. From the Tongans the Samoans also borrowed the custom of building oblong quadrangular houses, which were called afolau. The best houses, in particular those of important chiefs, were built on raised platforms of stones about three feet high. One of the circular houses would measure about thirty-five feet in diameter by a hundred in circumference. Two or three posts in the centre of the house, some twenty feet high, supported the roof, the lower end of which rested on a series of short posts, four or five feet high, placed at intervals of about four feet all round the house. The intervals between these posts were sometimes closed by thatch neatly tied to sticks, which were planted upright in the ground and fastened to the eaves; but more commonly, it would seem, the intervals between the posts were left open and only closed at night by blinds made of coco-nut leaves, which could be let down or pulled up like Venetian blinds. During the day these blinds were drawn up, so that there was a free current of air all through the house. The roofs of the best houses were made of bread-fruit wood carefully thatched with leaves of the wild sugar-cane; when well made, the thatch might last seven years. The circular roofs were so constructed that they could be lifted clean off the posts and removed anywhere, either by land or on a raft of canoes. The whole house could also be transported; and as Samoan houses were often bartered, or given as presents, or paid as fines, it frequently happened that they were removed from place to place. In the whole house there was not a single nail or spike: all joints were made by exactly corresponding notches and secured by cinnet, that is cordage made from the dried fibre of the coco-nut husk. The timber of the best houses was the wood of the bread-fruit tree; and, if protected against damp, it would last fifty years. The floor of the house was composed of stones, overlaid with fine gravel and sand. In the centre of the floor was the fire-place, a circular hollow two or three feet in diameter and a few inches deep, lined with hardened clay. It was not used for cooking, but for the purpose of lighting up the house by night. The cooking was never done in the house, but always in the open air outside on an oven of hot stones. An ordinary Samoan house consisted of a single apartment, which served as the common parlour, dining-room, and bedroom of the family. But at night small tents made of bark-cloth were hung from the ridge-pole, and under them the various members of the family slept separately, the tents serving them at the same time as curtains to protect them against the mosquitoes. Formerly, the houses of the principal chiefs were surrounded with two fences; the outer of the two was formed of strong posts and had a narrow zigzag entrance, several yards long, leading to an opening in the inner fence, which was made of reeds. But with the advent of a more peaceful epoch these fortified enclosures for the most part disappeared. Houses constructed on the Tongan model were often very substantially built: a double row of posts and cross-beams supported the roof. These houses were found better able to resist the high winds which prevail at one season of the year.404

Like the rest of the Polynesians, the Samoans are an agricultural people, and subsist mainly by the fruits of the earth, though the lagoons and reefs furnish them with a large supply of fish and shell-fish, of which they are very fond. They all, but especially persons of rank, occasionally regaled themselves on pigs, fowls, and turtle. But bread-fruit, taro, yams, bananas, and coco-nuts formed the staff of life in Samoa. As the soil is very rich and the hot, damp climate is eminently favourable to the growth of vegetation, food was always abundant, and the natives could procure the necessaries and even the luxuries of life at the cost of very little labour; if they tilled the soil, it was rather to vary their diet than to wring a scanty subsistence from a niggardly nature. Coco-nut palms, bread-fruit and chestnut trees, and wild yams, bananas, and plantains abound throughout the islands, and require little attention to make them yield an ample crop. For about half the year the Samoans have a plentiful supply of food from the bread-fruit trees: during the other half they depend principally upon their taro plantations. While the bread-fruit is in season, every family lays up a quantity of the ripe fruit in a pit lined with leaves and covered with stones. The fruit soon ferments and forms a soft mass, which emits a very vile smell every time the pit is opened. In this state it may be kept for years, for the older and more rotten the fruit is, the better the natives like it. They bake it, with the juice of the coco-nut, into flat cakes, which are eaten when the ripe fruit is out of season or when taro is scarce. For taro is on the whole the staple food of the Samoans; it grows all the year round. The water of the coco-nut furnishes a cool, delicious, slightly effervescing beverage, which is peculiarly welcome to the hot and weary wayfarer far from any spring or rivulet.405

To obtain land for cultivation the Samoans went into the forest and cut down the brushwood and creeping vines with small hatchets or large knives. The large forest-trees they destroyed by chopping away the bark in a circle round the trunk and then kindling a fire of brushwood at the foot of the tree. Thus in the course of a few days a fair-sized piece of ground would be cleared, nothing of the forest remaining but charred trunks and leafless branches. Then followed the planting. The agricultural instruments employed were of the simplest pattern. A dibble, or pointed stick of hard wood, was used to make the hole in which the plant was deposited. This took the place of a plough, and a branch served the purpose of a harrow. Sometimes the earth was dug and smoothed with the blade of a canoe paddle. The labour of clearing and planting the ground was done by the men, but the task of weeding it generally devolved on the women. The first crop taken from a piece of land newly cleared in the forest was yams, which require a peculiar culture and frequent change of site, two successive crops being seldom obtained from the same land. After the first crop of yams had been cleared off, taro was planted several times in succession; for this root does not, like yams, require a change of site. However, we are told that a second crop of taro grown on the same land was very inferior to the first, and that as a rule the land was allowed to remain fallow until the trees growing on it were as thick as a man's arm, when it was again cleared for cultivation. In the wet season taro was planted on the high land from one to four miles inland from the village; other kinds of taro were planted in the swamps, and these were considered more succulent than the taro grown on the uplands. The growing crops of taro were weeded at least twice a year. The natives resorted to irrigation, when they had the means; and they often dug trenches to drain away the water from swampy ground. Yams also required attention; for sticks had to be provided on which the plants could run. The fruit ripens only once a year, but it was stored up, and with care would keep till the next season. The natives found neither yams nor bread-fruit so nourishing as taro.406

The degree of progress which any particular community has made in civilisation may be fairly gauged by the degree of subdivision of labour among its members; for it is only by restricting his energies to a particular craft that a man can attain to any perfection in it. Judged by this standard the Samoans had advanced some way on the road to civilisation, since among them the division of labour was carried out to a considerable extent: in their native state they had not a few separate trades or professions, some of which may even be said to have developed the stability and organisation of trade guilds. Among them, for example, house-building, canoe-building, tattooing, and the making of nets and fish-hooks were distinct crafts, which, though not strictly hereditary, were usually confined to particular families. Thus by long practice and experience handed down from generation to generation a considerable degree of skill was acquired, and a considerable degree of reputation accrued to the family. Every trade had its particular patron god and was governed by certain well-known rules. The members formed, indeed, we are told, a trade union which was remarkably effective. Thus they had rules which prescribed the time and proportions of payment to be made at different stages of the work, and these rules were strictly observed and enforced by the workmen. For example, in the house-building trade, it was a standing custom that after the sides and one end of a house were finished, the principal part of the payment should be made. If the carpenters were dissatisfied with the amount of payment, they simply left off work and walked away, leaving the house unfinished, and no carpenter in the whole length and breadth of Samoa would dare to finish it, for it would have been as much as his business or even his life was worth to undertake the job. Anyone so foolhardy as thus to set the rules of the trade at defiance would have been attacked by the other workmen and robbed of his tools; at the best he would receive a severe thrashing, at the worst he might be killed. A house might thus stand unfinished for months or even years. Sooner or later, if he was to have a roof over his head, the unfortunate owner had to yield to the trade union and agree to such terms as they might dictate. If it happened that the house was almost finished before the fourth and final payment was made, and the builder at that stage of the proceedings took offence, he would remove a beam from the roof before retiring in dudgeon, and no workman would dare to replace it. The rules in the other trades, such as canoe-building and tattooing, were practically the same. In canoe-building, for example, five separate payments were made to the builders at five stages of the work; and if at any stage the workmen were dissatisfied with the pay, they very unceremoniously abandoned the work until the employer apologised or came to terms. No other party of workmen would have the temerity to finish the abandoned canoe upon pain of bringing down on their heads the wrath of the whole fraternity of canoe-builders; any such rash offenders against the rules of the guild would be robbed of their tools, expelled from their clan, and prohibited from exercising their calling during the pleasure of the guild. Such strides had the Samoans made in the direction of trade unionism.407

In addition to their household duties women engaged in special work of their own, particularly in the manufacture of bark-cloths and of fine mats; but among them there seems to have been no subdivision of labour and consequently no professional guilds. In all families the making of bark-cloth and mats was carried on by the women indifferently, though some no doubt excelled others in the skill of their handiwork. The cloth was made from the bark of the paper-mulberry (Morus papyrifera), which was beaten out on boards with a grooved beetle. The sound of these beetles ringing on the boards, though not very musical, was a familiar sound in a Samoan village. The fine mats, on the manufacture of which the Samoans particularly prided themselves, were worn as dresses on ceremonial occasions. They were made from the leaves of a large plant which the natives call lau ie; the leaves closely resemble those of the pandanus, but are larger. These mats were of a straw or cream colour, and were sometimes fringed with tufts of scarlet feathers of the paroquet. They were thin and almost as flexible as calico. Many months, sometimes even years, were spent over the making of a single mat. Another kind of fine mat was made from the bark of a plant of the nettle tribe (Hibiscus tiliaceus), which grows wild over the islands. Mats of the latter sort were shaggy on one side, and, being bleached white, resembled fleecy sheep-skins. These fine mats, especially those made from the leaves of the pandanus-like plant, were considered by the Samoans to be their most valuable property; they were handed down as heirlooms from father to son, and were so much coveted that wars were sometimes waged to obtain possession of them. The pedigrees of the more famous mats, particularly those fringed with red feathers, were carefully kept, and when they changed hands, their history was related with solemn precision. Age enhanced their value; and their tattered condition, deemed a proof of antiquity, rather added to than detracted from the estimation in which they were held. The wealth of a family consisted of its mats; with them it remunerated the services of carpenters, boat-builders, and tattooers. The mats formed, indeed, a sort of currency or medium of exchange; for while the Samoans were not in general a trading people, and there was little or no actual buying and selling among them, there was nevertheless a considerable exchange of property on many occasions; at marriage, for example, it was customary for the bride's family to give mats and bark-cloth as her dowry, while the bridegroom's family provided a house, canoes, and other articles. But though the fine mats were thus paid away or given in exchange, they had no fixed negotiable value, and thus did not serve the purpose of money.408

§ 4. Rights of Property

In Samoa the rights of private property, both personal and landed, were fully recognised, but with certain limitations. The lands were owned alike by chiefs and by heads of families; the laws regulating their possession were very definite. In no case did the whole of the land belong to the chiefs. Every family owned portions of land not only in the village and adjoining gardens, but far away in the unreclaimed forests of the interior. The title, which passed by inheritance, generally vested in the family; but the family was represented by the head, who often claimed the right to dispose of it by sale or otherwise. Yet he dared not do anything without consulting all concerned; were he to persist in thwarting the wishes of the rest, they would take his title from him and give it to another. Sometimes, however, the title to landed property vested in individual owners. The legitimate heir was the oldest surviving brother, but occasionally he waived his right in favour of one of the sons. Women might hold land when the male side of a family was extinct. The boundaries of land were well defined, being marked by pathways, natural limits, such as a river, or by trenches and stones half buried in the ground. Every inch of ground had its owner, even to the tops of the mountains. Trespass by a neighbouring village would be resisted, if necessary, by force of arms.409

In regard to personal property it may be said that, like landed property, it belonged rather to the family than to the individual; for no Samoan could refuse to give, without an equivalent, anything which any member of his family asked for. In this way boats, tools, garments, and so forth passed freely from hand to hand. Nay, a man could enter the plantation of a relative and help himself to the fruit without asking the owner's leave; such an appropriation was not considered to be stealing. Under this communistic system, as it has been called, accumulation of property was scarcely possible, and industry was discouraged. Why should a diligent man toil when he knew that the fruit of his labour might all be consumed by lazy kinsfolk? He might lay out a plantation of bananas, and when they were full-grown, bunch after bunch might be plucked and eaten by his less industrious relations, until, exasperated beyond endurance, the unfortunate owner would cut down all the remaining trees. No matter how hard a man worked, he could not keep his earnings; they all soon passed out of his hands into the common stock of the clan. The system, we are told, ate like a canker-worm at the roots of individual and national progress.410

§ 5. Government, Social Ranks, Respect for Chiefs

The native government of Samoa was not, like that of Tonga, a centralised despotism. Under the form of a monarchy and aristocracy the political constitution was fundamentally republican and indeed democratic. The authority of the king and chiefs was limited and more or less nominal; practically Samoa consisted of a large number of petty independent and self-governing communities, which sometimes combined for defence or common action in a sort of loose federation.411

To a superficial observer the aristocratic cast of Samoan society might at first sight seem very marked. The social ranks were sharply divided from each other, and the inferior orders paid great formal deference to their superiors. At the head of all ranked the chiefs (alii); but even among them the ordinary chiefs were distinct from the sacred chiefs (alii paia), who enjoyed the highest honours. These sacred chiefs preserved their pedigrees for twenty or more generations with as great care as the oldest and proudest families in Europe, and they possessed many feudal rights and privileges which were as well known and as fully acknowledged as are, or were, those of any lord of a manor in England. The task of preserving a record of a chief's pedigrees was entrusted to his orator or spokesman, who belonged to a lower social rank (that of the tulafales).412 The influence of chiefs was supported by the belief that they possessed some magical or supernatural power, by which they could enforce their decisions.413 Their persons were sacred or taboo. They might not be touched by any one. No one might sit beside them. In the public assemblies a vacant place was left on each side of the seat of honour which they occupied. Some chiefs were so holy that they might not even be looked at by day. Their food might not be handed to them, but was thrown to them, and it was so sacred that no one might eat any of it which they had left over.414

"The sacredness attributed to many chiefs of high rank gave rise to observances which were irksome to their families and dependents, since whatever they came in contact with required to undergo the ceremony of lulu‛u, or sprinkling with a particular kind of cocoanut-water (niu-ui); both to remove the sanctity supposed to be communicated to the article or place that had touched the chief, and also to counteract the danger of speedy death, which was believed to be imminent to any person who might touch the sacred chief, or anything that he had touched; so great was the mantle of sanctity thrown around these chiefs, although unconnected with the priesthood. Thus the spot where such a chief had sat or slept was sprinkled with water immediately he had left it, as were also the persons who had sat on either side of him when he received company, as well as all the attendants who had waited upon him.

"This remarkable custom was also observed on other occasions. It was always used on the occasion of deposing a chief, and depriving him of his Ao, or titles, in which case the ceremony was performed by some of those who had either conferred the titles or had the power to do so. In the case of O le Tamafainga, the usurper who was killed in A‛ana in 1829, his body was first sprinkled with cocoanut-water, and his title of O le Tuia‛ana recalled from him, before he was hewn in pieces. The ceremony consisted of sprinkling the body with cocoanut-water, and the officiating chief or Tulafale saying, 'Give us back our Ao,' by which means the title was recalled, and the sacredness attaching to it was dispelled. It was also used over persons newly tattooed, and upon those who contaminated themselves by contact with a dead body. In each of these cases the ceremony was carefully observed, and reverently attended to, as very dire consequences were considered certain to follow its omission."415 Thus the sacredness of a chief was deemed dangerous to all persons with whom he might come, whether directly or indirectly, into contact; it was apparently conceived as a sort of electric fluid which discharged itself, it might be with fatal effect, on whatever it touched. And the sacredness of a chief was clearly classed with the uncleanness of a dead body, since contact with a dead body involved the same dangerous consequences as contact with the sacred person of a chief and had to be remedied in precisely the same manner. The two conceptions of holiness and uncleanness, which to us seem opposite and even contradictory, blend in the idea of taboo, in which both are implicitly held as it were in solution. It requires the analytic tendency of more advanced thought to distinguish the two conceptions, to precipitate, as it were, the components of the solution in the testing-tube of the mind.

The profound respect which the Samoans entertained for their chiefs manifested itself in yet another fashion. A special form of speech was adopted in addressing a chief, in conversing in his presence, or even in alluding to him in his absence. Thus there arose what is called a chiefs' language, or polite diction, which was used exclusively in speaking to or of a chief, whether the speaker was a common man or a chief of lower rank. But it was never used by a chief when he was speaking of himself. Persons of high rank, in addressing others and alluding to themselves, always employed ordinary language and sometimes the very lowest terms; so that it was often amusing to listen to expressions of feigned humility uttered by a proud man, who would have been indignant indeed if the same terms which he applied to himself had been applied to him by others. Thus, for example, the actions of sitting, talking, eating, sleeping, and dying were expressed by different terms according as the agent was a chief or a common man. The ordinary word for a house was fale; but a chief's house was called maota. The common word for anger was ita; the polite term was toasa. To sleep in ordinary language was moe, but in polite language it was tofā or toá. To be sick in common speech was mai, but in polite language it was ngasengase, faatafa, pulu pulusi. To die was mate or pe (said of animals), or oti (said of men); but the courtly expressions for death were maliu ("gone"), folau ("gone on a voyage"), fale-lauasi, ngasololo ao, and a number of others. The terms substituted in the court language sometimes had a meaning the very opposite of that borne by the corresponding terms in the ordinary language. For example, in the court language firewood was called polata, which properly means the stem of the banana plant, a wood that is incombustible. If the use of an ordinary word in the presence of a chief were unavoidable, it had to be prefaced by the apologetic phrase veaeane, literally "saving your presence," every time the word was spoken. Nay, the courtly language itself varied with the rank of the chief addressed or alluded to. For example, if you wished to say that a person had come, you would say alu of a common man; alala of a head of a household or landowner (tulafale); maliu of a petty chief; susu of a chief of the second class; and afiu of a chief of the highest rank.416 The same respect which was shown in the use of words descriptive of a chief's actions or possessions was naturally extended to his own name, when he belonged to the class of sacred chiefs. If his name happened to be also the name of a common object, it ceased to be used to designate the thing in question, and a new word or phrase was substituted for it. Henceforth the old name of the object was dropped and might never again be pronounced in the chief's district nor indeed anywhere in his presence. In one district, for example, the chief's name was Flying-fox; hence the ordinary word for flying-fox (re'a) was dropped, and that species of bat was known as "bird of heaven" (manu langi).417 Again, when the chief of Pango-pango, in the island of Tutuila, was called Maunga, which means "mountain," that word might never be used in his presence, and a courtly term was substituted for it.418 This is only one instance of the ways in which the dialects of savages tend to vary from each other under the influence of superstition.