V
THE GIRL AND HER AGE GROUP
Until a child is six or seven at least she associates very little with her contemporaries. Brothers and sisters and small cousins who live in the same household, of course, frolic and play together, but outside the household each child clings closely to its older guardian and only comes in contact with other children in case the little nursemaids are friends. But at about seven years of age, the children begin to form larger groups, a kind of voluntary association which never exists in later life, that is, a group recruited from both relationship and neighbourhood groups. These are strictly divided along sex lines and antagonism between the small girls and the small boys is one of the salient features of the group life. The little girls are just beginning to “be ashamed” in the presence of older brothers, and the prohibition that one small girl must never join a group of boys is beginning to be enforced. The fact that the boys are less burdened and so can range further afield in search of adventure, while the girls have to carry their heavy little charges with them, also makes a difference between the sexes. The groups of small children which hang about the fringes of some adult activity often contain both girls and boys, but here the association principle is simply age discrimination on the part of their elders, rather than voluntary association on the children’s part.
These age gangs are usually confined to the children who live in eight or ten contiguous households.[2] They are flexible chance associations, the members of which manifest a vivid hostility towards their contemporaries in neighbouring villages and sometimes towards other gangs within their own village. Blood ties cut across these neighbourhood alignments so that a child may be on good terms with members of two or three different groups. A strange child from another group, provided she came alone, could usually take refuge beside a relative. But the little girls of Siufaga looked askance at the little girls of Lumā, the nearest village and both looked with even greater suspicion at the little girls from Faleasao, who lived twenty minutes’ walk away. However, heart burnings over these divisions were very temporary affairs. When Tua’s brother was ill, her entire family moved from the far end of Siufaga into the heart of Lumā. For a few days Tua hung rather dolefully about the house, only to be taken in within a week by the central Lumā children with complete amiability. But when she returned some weeks later to Siufaga, she became again “a Siufaga girl,” object elect of institutionalised scorn and gibes to her recent companions.
[2] See Neighbourhood Maps. Appendix I, [page 251].
No very intense friendships are made at this age. The relationship and neighbourhood structure of the group overshadows the personalities within it. Also the most intense affection is always reserved for near relatives and pairs of little sisters take the place of chums. The Western comment, “Yes, Mary and Julia are such good friends as well as sisters!” becomes in Samoa, “But she is a relative,” if a friendship is commented upon. The older ones fend for the younger, give them their spoils, weave them flower necklaces and give them their most treasured shells. This relationship aspect is the only permanent element in the group and even this is threatened by any change of residence. The emotional tone attached to the inhabitants of a strange village tends to make even a well-known cousin seem a little strange.
Of the different groups of little girls there was only one which showed characteristics which would make it possible to classify it as a gang. An accident of residence accounts for the most intense group development being in the centre of Lumā, where nine little girls of nearly the same age and with abundant relationship ties lived close together. The development of a group which played continually together and maintained a fairly coherent hostility towards outsiders, seems to be more of a function of residence than of the personality of any child particularly endowed with powers of leadership. The nine little girls in this group were less shy, less suspicious, more generous towards one another, more socially enterprising than other children of the same age and in general reflected the socialising effects of group life. Outside this group, the children of this age had to rely much more upon their immediate relationship group reinforced perhaps by the addition of one or two neighbours. Where the personality of a child stood out it was more because of exceptional home environment than a result of social give-and-take with children of her own age.
Children of this age had no group activities except play, in direct antithesis to the home life where the child’s only function was work—baby-tending and the performance of numerous trivial tasks and innumerable errands. They foregathered in the early evening, before the late Samoan supper, and occasionally during the general siesta hour in the afternoon. On moonlight nights they scoured the villages alternately attacking or fleeing from the gangs of small boys, peeking through drawn shutters, catching land crabs, ambushing wandering lovers, or sneaking up to watch a birth or a miscarriage in some distant house. Possessed by a fear of the chiefs, a fear of small boys, a fear of their relatives and by a fear of ghosts, no gang of less than four or five dared to venture forth on these nocturnal excursions. They were veritable groups of little outlaws escaping from the exactions of routine tasks. Because of the strong feeling for relationship and locality, the part played by stolen time, the need for immediately executed group plans, and the punishment which hung over the heads of children who got too far out of earshot, the Samoan child was as dependent upon the populousness of her immediate locality, as is the child in a rural community in the West. True her isolation here was never one-eighth of a mile in extent, but glaring sun and burning sands, coupled with the number of relatives to be escaped from in the day or the number of ghosts to be escaped from at night, magnified this distance until as a barrier to companionship it was equivalent to three or four miles in rural America. Thus there occurred the phenomenon of the isolated child in a village full of children of her own age. Such was Luna, aged ten, who lived in one of the scattered houses belonging to a high chief’s household. This house was situated at the very end of the village where she lived with her grandmother, her mother’s sister Sami, Sami’s husband and baby, and two younger maternal aunts, aged seventeen and fifteen. Luna’s mother was dead. Her other brothers and sisters lived on another island with her father’s people. She was ten, but young for her age, a quiet, listless child, reluctant to take the initiative, the sort of child who would always need an institutionalised group life. Her only relatives close by were two girls of fourteen, whose long legs and absorption in semi-adult tasks made them far too grown-up companions for her. Some little girls of fourteen might have tolerated Luna about, but not Selu, the younger of the cousins, whose fine mat was already three feet under way. In the next house, a stone’s throw away, lived two little girls, Pimi and Vana, aged eight and ten. But they were not relatives and being chief baby-tenders to four younger children, they had no time for exploring. There were no common relatives to bring them together and so Luna lived a solitary life, except when an enterprising young aunt of eleven came home to her mother’s house. This aunt, Siva, was a fascinating companion, a vivid and precocious child, whom Luna followed about in open-mouthed astonishment. But Siva had proved too much of a handful for her widowed mother, and the matai, her uncle, had taken her to live in his immediate household at the other end of the village, on the other side of the central Lumā gang. They formed far more attractive companions and Siva seldom got as far as her mother’s house in her occasional moments of freedom. So unenterprising Luna cared for her little cousin, followed her aunt and grandmother about and most of the time presented a very forlorn appearance.
In strong contrast was the fate of Lusi, who was only seven, too young to be really eligible for the games of her ten- and eleven-year-old elders. Had she lived in an isolated spot, she would have been merely a neighbourhood baby. But her house was in a strategic position, next door to that of her cousins, Maliu and Pola, important members of the Lumā gang. Maliu, one of the oldest members of the group, had a tremendous feeling for all her young relatives, and Lusi was her first cousin. So tiny, immature Lusi had the full benefit of a group life denied to Luna.
At the extreme end of Siufaga lived Vina, a gentle, unassuming girl of fourteen. Her father’s house stood all alone in the centre of a grove of palm trees, just out of sight and ear-shot of the nearest neighbour. Her only companions were her first cousin, a reserved capable eighteen-year-old and two cousins of seventeen and nineteen. There was one little cousin of twelve also in the neighbourhood, but five younger brothers and sisters kept her busy. Vina also had several brothers and sisters younger than herself, but they were old enough to fend for themselves and Vina was comparatively free to follow the older girls on fishing expeditions. So she never escaped from being the little girl, tagging after older ones, carrying their loads and running their errands. She was a flurried anxious child, overconcerned with pleasing others, docile in her chance encounters with contemporaries from long habit of docility. A free give-and-take relationship within her own age group had been denied to her and was now denied to her forever. For it was only to the eight- to twelve-year-old girl that this casual group association was possible. As puberty approached, and a girl gained physical strength and added skill, her household absorbed her again. She must make the oven, she must go to work on the plantation, she must fish. Her days were filled with long tasks and new responsibilities.