Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before

by George Turner

For other crimes they had some such punishments as tying the hands of the culprit behind his back, and marching him along naked, something like the ancient French law of "amende honorable;" or, tying him hand to hand and foot to foot, and then carrying him suspended from a prickly pole run through between the tied hands and feet, and laying him down before the family or village against whom he had transgressed, as if he were a pig to be killed and cooked; compelling the culprit to sit naked for hours in the broiling sun; to be hung up by the heels; or to beat the head with stones till the face was covered with blood; or to play at handball with the prickly sea-urchin; or to take five bites of a pungent root, which was like filling the mouth five times with cayenne pepper. It was considered cowardly to shrink from the punishment on which the village court might decide, and so the young man would go boldly forward, sit down before the chiefs, bite the root five times, get up and walk away with his mouth on fire.

If two families in a village quarrelled, and wished to fight, the other heads of families and the chief stepped in and forbad; and it was at the peril of either party to carry on the strife contrary to the decided voice of public opinion.

These village communities, of from two to five hundred people, considered themselves perfectly distinct from each other, quite independent, and at liberty to act as they pleased on their own ground, and in their own affairs.

Then, again, these villages, in numbers of eight or ten, united by common consent, and formed a district, or state, for mutual protection. Some particular village was known as the capital of the district; and it was common to have a higher chief than any of the rest, as the head of that village, and who bore the title of King. Just as in the individual villages the chief and heads of families united in suppressing strife when two parties quarrelled, so it was in the event of a disturbance between any two villages of the district, the combined chiefs and heads of families of all the other villages united in forbidding strife. When war was threatened by another district, no single village acted alone; the whole district, or state, assembled at their capital, and had a special parliament to deliberate as to what should be done.

These meetings were held out of doors. The heads of families were the orators and members of parliament. The kings and chiefs rarely spoke. The representatives of each village had their known places, where they sat, under the shade of bread-fruit trees, and formed groups all round the margin of an open space, called the malæ (or forum), a thousand feet in circumference. Strangers from all parts might attend; and on some occasions there were two thousand people and upwards at these parliamentary gatherings. The speaker stood up when he addressed the assembly, laid over his shoulder his fly-flapper, or badge of office similar to what is seen on some ancient Egyptian standards. He held before him a staff six feet long, and leaned forward on it as he went on with his speech. A Samoan orator did not let his voice fall, but rather gradually raised it, so that the last word in a sentence was the loudest. It is the province of the head village to have the opening or king's speech, and to keep order in the meeting; and it was the particular province of another to reply to it, and so they went on. To a stranger the etiquette and delay connected with such meetings was tiresome in the extreme. When the first speaker rose, other heads of families belonging to his village, to the number of ten or twenty, rose up, too, as if they all wished to speak. This was to show to the assembly that the heads of families were all at their post, and who they were. They talked among themselves for a while, and it ended in one after another sitting down, after having passed on his right to speak to another. It was quite well known, in most cases, who was to speak, but they must have this preliminary formality about it. At last, after an hour or more all had sat down but the one who was to speak; and, laden by them with the responsibility of speaking, he commenced. He was not contented with a mere word of salutation, such as, "Gentlemen," but he must, with great minuteness, go over the names and titles, and a host of ancestral references, of which they were proud. Another half-hour was spent with this. Up to this time conversation went on freely all round the meeting; but whenever he came to the point of his address, viz., the object of the meeting and an opinion on it, all was attention. After the first speech, it was probably mid-day, and then food was brought in. The young men and women of the family, decked off in their best, came in a string of ten or twenty to their chief, each carrying something, and, naming him, said it was food for him. He told them to take it to So-and-so, and then they marched off to that chief, and said that it was food from such a one. This person would return the compliment by-and-by, and in this way there was, for hours, a delightful flow of friendship all over the place. On such occasions parties who had been living at variance had a fine opportunity of showing kindness to each other. Amid all this feasting the speechifying went on. As the debate advanced, the interest increased. They generally broke up at sundown; but if it was something of unusual interest and urgency, they went on speechifying in the dark, or in the moonlight, and might not adjourn till long after midnight. Unless all were pretty much agreed, nothing was done. They were afraid to thwart even a small minority.

Throughout the Samoan group there were, in all, ten of these separate districts such as I have described. In war some of the districts remained neutral, and of those engaged in the strife there might be two against one, or three against five, or, as in a late prolonged war, five against two. The district which was conquered, was exposed to the taunts and overbearing of their conquerors. But a subdued district seldom remained many years with the brand of "conquered." They were up and at it as soon as they had a favourable opportunity, and were probably themselves in turn the conquerors.

II. But I hasten to notice the second thing which I have already remarked was an auxiliary towards the maintenance of peace and order in Samoa, viz. superstitious fear. If the chief and heads of families, in their court of inquiry into any case of stealing, or other concealed matter, had a difficulty in finding out the culprit, they would make all involved swear that they were innocent. In swearing before the chiefs the suspected parties laid a handful of grass on the stone, or whatever it was, which was supposed to be the representative of the village god, and, laying their hand on it, would say, "In the presence of our chiefs now assembled, I lay my hand on the stone. If I stole the thing may I speedily die." This was a common mode of swearing. The meaning of the grass was a silent additional imprecation that his family might all die, and that grass might grow over their habitation. If all swore, and the culprit was still undiscovered, the chiefs then wound up the affair by committing the case to the village god, and solemnly invoking him to mark out for speedy destruction the guilty mischief-maker.

But, instead of appealing to the chiefs, and calling for an oath, many were contented with their own individual schemes and imprecations to frighten thieves and prevent stealing. When a man went to his plantation and saw that some cocoa-nuts, or a bunch of bananas, had been stolen, he would stand and shout at the top of his voice two or three times, "May fire blast the eyes of the person who has stolen my bananas! May fire burn down his eyes and the eyes of his god too!" This rang throughout the adjacent plantations, and made the thief tremble. They dreaded such uttered imprecations. Others cursed more privately when a thing was stolen, and called in the aid of a priest. In common disputes also, affecting the veracity of each other, it was customary for the one to say to the other, "Touch your eyes, if what you say is true." If he touched his eyes, the dispute was settled. It was as if he had said, "May I be cursed with blindness if it is not true what I say." Or the doubter would say to his opponent, "Who will eat you? Say the name of your god." He whose word was doubted would then name the household god of his family, as much as to say, "May god So-and-so destroy me, if what I have said is not true." Or the person whose word was doubted might adopt the more expressive course still of taking a stick and digging a hole in the ground, which was as if he said, "May I be buried immediately if what I say is not true." But there was another and more extensive class of curses, which were also feared, and formed a powerful check on stealing, especially from plantations and fruit-trees, viz. the silent hieroglyphic taboo, or tapui (tapooe), as they call it. Of this there was a great variety, and the following are specimens:—

1. The sea-pike taboo.—If a man wished that a sea-pike might run into the body of the person who attempted to steal, say, his bread-fruits, he would plait some cocoa-nut leaflets in the form of a sea-pike, and suspend it from one or more of the trees which he wished to protect. Any ordinary thief would be terrified to touch a tree from which this was suspended, he would expect that the next time he went to the sea, a fish of the said description would dart up and mortally wound him.

2. The white shark taboo was another object of terror to a thief. This was done by plaiting a cocoa-nut leaf in the form of a shark, adding fins, etc., and this they suspended from the tree. It was tantamount to an expressed imprecation, that the thief might be devoured by the white shark the next time he went to fish.