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.