Coming of age in Samoa

by Margaret Mead

THE GIRL IN THE COMMUNITY

The community ignores both boys and girls from birth until they are fifteen or sixteen years of age. Children under this age have no social standing, no recognised group activities, no part in the social life except when they are conscripted for the informal dance floor. But at a year or two beyond puberty—the age varies from village to village so that boys of sixteen will in one place still be classed as small boys, in another as taule’ale’as, young men—both boys and girls are grouped into a rough approximation of the adult groupings, given a name for their organisation, and are invested with definite obligations and privileges in the community life.

The organisation of young men, the Aumaga, of young girls and the wives of untitled men and widows, the Aualuma, and of the wives of titled men, are all echoes of the central political structure of the village, the Fono, the organisation of matais, men who have the titles of chiefs or of talking chiefs. The Fono is always conceived as a round house in which each title has a special position, must be addressed with certain ceremonial phrases, and given a fixed place in the order of precedence in the serving of the kava. This ideal house has certain fixed divisions, in the right sector sit the high chief and his special assistant chiefs; in the front of the house sit the talking chiefs whose business it is to make the speeches, welcome strangers, accept gifts, preside over the distribution of food and make all plans and arrangements for group activities. Against the posts at the back of the house sit the matais of low rank, and between the posts and at the centre sit those of so little importance that no place is reserved for them. This framework of titles continues from generation to generation and holds a fixed place in the larger ideal structure of the titles of the whole island, the whole archipelago, the whole of Samoa. With some of these titles, which are in the gift of certain families, go certain privileges, a right to a house name, a right to confer a taupo name, a princess title, upon some young girl relative and an heir-apparent title, the manaia, on some boy of the household. Besides these prerogatives of the high chiefs, each member of the two classes of matais, chiefs and talking chiefs, has certain ceremonial rights. A talking chief must be served his kava with a special gesture, must be addressed with a separate set of verbs and nouns suitable to his rank, must be rewarded by the chiefs in tapa or fine mats for his ceremonially rendered services. The chiefs must be addressed with still another set of nouns and verbs, must be served with a different and more honourable gesture in the kava ceremony, must be furnished with food by their talking chiefs, must be honoured and escorted by the talking chiefs on every important occasion. The name of the village, the ceremonial name of the public square in which great ceremonies are held, the name of the meeting house of the Fono, the names of the principal chiefs and talking chiefs, the names of taupo and manaia, of the Aualuma and the Aumaga, are contained in a set of ceremonial salutations called the Fa’alupega, or courtesy titles of a village or district. Visitors on formally entering a village must recite the Fa’alupega as their initial courtesy to their hosts.

The Aumaga mirrors this organisation of the older men. Here the young men learn to make speeches, to conduct themselves with gravity and decorum, to serve and drink the kava, to plan and execute group enterprises. When a boy is old enough to enter the Aumaga, the head of his household either sends a present of food to the group, announcing the addition of the boy to their number, or takes him to a house where they are meeting and lays down a great kava root as a present. Henceforth the boy is a member of a group which is almost constantly together. Upon them falls all the heavy work of the village and also the greater part of the social intercourse between villages which centres about the young unmarried people. When a visiting village comes, it is the Aumaga which calls in a body upon the visiting taupo, taking gifts, dancing and singing for her benefit.

The organisation of the Aualuma is a less formalised version of the Aumaga. When a girl is of age, two or three years past puberty, varying with the village practice, her matai will send an offering of food to the house of the chief taupo of the village, thus announcing that he wishes the daughter of his house to be henceforth counted as one of the group of young girls who form her court. But while the Aumaga is centred about the Fono, the young men meeting outside or in a separate house, but exactly mirroring the forms and ceremonies of their elders, the Aualuma is centred about the person of the taupo, forming a group of maids of honour. They have no organisation as have the Aumaga, and furthermore, they do hardly any work. Occasionally the young girls may be called upon to sew thatch or gather paper mulberry; more occasionally they plant and cultivate a paper mulberry crop, but their main function is to be ceremonial helpers for the meetings of the wives of matais, and village hostesses in inter-village life. In many parts of Samoa the Aualuma has fallen entirely to pieces and is only remembered in the greeting words that fall from the lips of a stranger. But if the Aumaga should disappear, Samoan village life would have to be entirely reorganised, for upon the ceremonial and actual work of the young and untitled men the whole life of the village depends.

Although the wives of matais have no organisation recognised in the Fa’alupega (courtesy titles), their association is firmer and more important than that of the Aualuma. The wives of titled men hold their own formal meetings, taking their status from their husbands, sitting at their husbands’ posts and drinking their husbands’ kava. The wife of the highest chief receives highest honour, the wife of the principal talking chief makes the most important speeches. The women are completely dependent upon their husbands for their status in this village group. Once a man has been given a title, he can never go back to the Aumaga. His title may be taken away from him when he is old, or if he is inefficient, but a lower title will be given him that he may sit and drink his kava with his former associates. But the widow or divorced wife of a matai must go back into the Aualuma, sit with the young girls outside the house, serve the food and run the errands, entering the women’s fono only as a servant or an entertainer.

The women’s fonos are of two sorts: fonos which precede or follow communal work, sewing the thatch for a guest house, bringing the coral rubble for its floor or weaving fine mats for the dowry of the taupo; and ceremonial fonos to welcome visitors from another village. Each of these meetings was designated by its purpose, as a falelalaga, a weaving bee, or an ’aiga fiafia tama’ita’i, ladies’ feast. The women are only recognised socially by the women of a visiting village but the taupo and her court are the centre of the recognition of both men and women in the malaga, the traveling party. And these wives of high chiefs have to treat their own taupo with great courtesy and respect, address her as “your highness,” accompany her on journeys, use a separate set of nouns and verbs when speaking to her. Here then is a discrepancy in which the young girls who are kept in strict subjection within their households, outrank their aunts and mothers in the social life between villages. This ceremonial undercutting of the older women’s authority might seriously jeopardise the discipline of the household, if it were not for two considerations. The first is the tenuousness of the girls’ organisation, the fact that within the village their chief raison d’être is to dance attendance upon the older women, who have definite industrial tasks to perform for the village; the second is the emphasis upon the idea of service as the chief duty of the taupo. The village princess is also the village servant. It is she who waits upon strangers, spreads their beds and makes their kava, dances when they wish it, and rises from her sleep to serve either the visitors or her own chief. And she is compelled to serve the social needs of the women as well as the men. Do they decide to borrow thatch in another village, they dress their taupo in her best and take her along to decorate the malaga. Her marriage is a village matter, planned and carried through by the talking chiefs and their wives who are her counsellors and chaperons. So that the rank of the taupo is really a further daily inroad upon her freedom as an individual, while the incessant chaperonage to which she is subjected and the way in which she is married without regard to her own wishes are a complete denial of her personality. And similarly, the slighter prestige of her untitled sisters, whose chief group activity is waiting upon their elders, has even less real significance in the daily life of the village.

With the exception of the taupo, the assumption of whose title is the occasion of a great festival and enormous distribution of property by her chief to the talking chiefs who must hereafter support and confirm her rank, a Samoan girl of good family has two ways of making her début. The first, the formal entry into the Aualuma is often neglected and is more a formal fee to the community than a recognition of the girl herself. The second way is to go upon a malaga, a formal travelling party. She may go as a near relative of the taupo in which case she will be caught up in a whirl of entertainment with which the young men of the host village surround their guests; or she may travel as the only girl in a small travelling party in which case she will be treated as a taupo. (All social occasions demand the presence of a taupo, a manaia, and a talking chief; and if individuals actually holding these titles are not present, some one else has to play the rôle.) Thus it is in inter-village life, either as a member of the Aualuma who call upon and dance for the manaia of the visiting malaga, or as a visiting girl in a strange village, that the unmarried Samoan girl is honoured and recognised by her community.

But these are exceptional occasions. A malaga may come only once a year, especially in Manu’a which numbers only seven villages in the whole archipelago. And in the daily life of the village, at crises, births, deaths, marriages, the unmarried girls have no ceremonial part to play. They are simply included with the “women of the household” whose duty it is to prepare the layette for the new baby, or carry stones to strew on the new grave. It is almost as if the community by its excessive recognition of the girl as a taupo or member of the Aualuma, considered itself exonerated from paying any more attention to her.