Coming of age in Samoa

by Margaret Mead

The ranking by age is disturbed in only a few cases. In each village one or two high chiefs have the hereditary right to name some girl of their household as its taupo, the ceremonial princess of the house. The girl who at fifteen or sixteen is made a taupo 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 taupos 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 girl’s 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 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 taupo, 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 will beard 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[1] within a Samoan 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 between younger and older relatives. The stress upon 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 of etiquette prescribed 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 avoidance 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 and not feel ashamed.

[1] See Appendix, [page 249].

Tei, 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 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, and the emotional tone seems to be the same in each case. Relationship by marriage is counted only as long as an actual marriage 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 multitude 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 property given and of the service rendered is kept and a return gift demanded at the earliest opportunity. Nevertheless, in native theory the two acts are separate, each one in turn becoming a “beggar,” a pensioner upon another’s bounty. In olden times, the beggar sometimes wore a special girdle which delicately hinted at the cause of his visit. One old chief gave me a graphic description of the behaviour of some one who had come to ask a favour of a relative. “He will come early in the morning and enter quietly, sitting down in the very back of the house, in the place of least honour. You will say to him, ‘So you have come, be welcome!’ and he will answer, ‘I have come indeed, saving your noble presence.’ Then you will say, ‘Are you thirsty? Alas for your coming, there is little that is good within the house.’ And he will answer, ‘Let it rest, thank you, for indeed I am not hungry nor would I drink.’ And he will sit and you will sit all day long and no mention is made of the purpose of his coming. All day he will sit and brush the ashes out of the hearth, performing this menial and dirty task with very great care and attention. If some one must go inland to the plantation to fetch food, he is the first to offer to go. If some one must go fishing to fill out the crew of a canoe, surely he is delighted to go, even though the sun is hot and his journey hither has been long. And all day you sit and wonder, ‘What can it be that he has come for? Is it that largest pig that he wants, or has he heard perhaps that my daughter has just finished a large and beautiful piece of tapa? Would it perhaps be well to send that tapa, as I had perhaps planned, as a present to my talking chief, to send it now, so that I may refuse him with all good faith?’ And he sits and studies your countenance and wonders if you will be favourable to his request. He plays with the children but refuses the necklace of flowers which they have woven for him and gives it instead to your daughter. Finally night comes. It is time to sleep and still he has not spoken. So finally you say to him, ‘Lo, I would sleep. Will you sleep also or will you be returning whence you have come?’ And only then will he speak and tell you the desire in his heart.”

So the intrigue, the needs, the obligations of the larger relationship group which threads its carefully remembered way in and out of many houses and many villages, cuts across the life of the household. One day it is the wife’s relatives who come to spend a month or borrow a fine mat; the next day it is the husband’s; the third, a niece who is a valued worker in the household may be called home by the illness of her father. Very seldom do all of even the small children of a biological family live in one household and while the claims of the household are paramount, in the routine of everyday life, illness or need on the part of the closer relative in another household will call the wanderers home again.

Obligations either to give general assistance or to give specific traditionally required service, as in a marriage or at a birth, follow relationship lines, not household lines. But a marriage of many years’ duration binds the relationship groups of husband and wife so closely together that to all appearances it is the household unit which gives aid and accedes to a request brought by the relative of either one. Only in families of high rank where the distaff side has priority in decisions and in furnishing the taupo, the princess of the house, and the male line priority in holding the title, does the actual blood relationship continue to be a matter of great practical importance; and this importance is lost in the looser household group constituted as it is by the three principles of blood, marriage and adoption, and bound together by common ties of everyday living and mutual economic dependence.

The matai of a household is theoretically exempt from the performance of small domestic tasks, but he is seldom actually so except in the case of a chief of high rank. However, the leading rôle is always accorded to him in any industrial pursuit; he dresses the pig for the feasts and cuts up the cocoanuts which the boys and women have gathered. The family cooking is done by the men and women both, but the bulk of the work falls upon the boys and young men. The old men spin the cocoanut fibre, and braid it into the native cord which is used for fish lines, fish nets, to sew canoe parts together and to bind all the different parts of a house in place. With the old women who do the bulk of the weaving and making of bark cloth, they supervise the younger children who remain at home. The heavy routine agricultural work falls upon the women who are responsible for the weeding, transplanting, gathering and transportation of the food, and the gathering of the paper mulberry wands from which bark will be peeled for making tapa, of the hibiscus bark and pandanus leaves for weaving mats. The older girls and women also do the routine reef fishing for octopuses, sea eggs, jelly fish, crabs, and other small fry. The younger girls carry the water, care for the lamps (to-day except in times of great scarcity when the candle nut and cocoanut oil are resorted to, the natives use kerosene lamps and lanterns), and sweep and arrange the houses. Tasks are all graduated with a fair recognition of abilities which differ with age, and except in the case of individuals of very high rank, a task is rejected because a younger person has skill enough to perform it, rather than because it is beneath an adult’s dignity.