The local parliament is convened

This attitude is fostered by the scarcity of taboos. In many parts of Polynesia, all women, and especially menstruating women, are considered contaminating and dangerous. A continuous rigorous social supervision is necessary, for a society can no more afford to ignore its most dangerous members than it can afford to neglect its most valuable. But in Samoa a girl’s power of doing harm is very limited. She cannot make tafolo, a breadfruit pudding usually made by the young men in any case, nor make the kava while she is menstruating. But she need retire to no special house; she need not eat alone; there is no contamination in her touch or look. In common with the young men and the older women, a girl gives a wide berth to a place where chiefs are engaged in formal work, unless she has special business there. It is not the presence of a woman which is interdicted but the uncalled-for intrusion of any one of either sex. No woman can be officially present at a gathering of chiefs unless she is taupo making the kava, but any woman may bring her husband his pipe or come to deliver a message, so long as her presence need not be recognised. The only place where a woman’s femininity is in itself a real source of danger is in the matter of fishing canoes and fishing tackle which she is forbidden to touch upon pain of spoiling the fishing. But the enforcement of this prohibition is in the hands of individual fishermen in whose houses the fishing equipment is kept.

Within the relationship group matters are entirely different. Here women are very specifically recognised. The oldest female progenitor of the line, that is, the sister of the last holder of the title, or his predecessor’s sister, has special rights over the distribution of the dowry which comes into the household. She holds the veto in the selling of land and other important family matters. Her curse is the most dreadful a man can incur for she has the power to “cut the line” and make the name extinct. If a man falls ill, it is his sister who must first take the formal oath that she has wished him no harm, as anger in her heart is most potent for evil. When a man dies, it is his paternal aunt or his sister who prepares the body for burial, anointing it with turmeric and rubbing it with oil, and it is she who sits beside the body, fanning away the flies, and keeps the fan in her possession ever after. And, in the more ordinary affairs of the household, in the economic arrangements between relatives, in disputes over property or in family feuds, the women play as active a part as the men.

The girl and woman repays the general social negligence which she receives with a corresponding insouciance. She treats the lore of the village, the genealogies of the titles, the origin myths and local tales, the intricacies of the social organisation with supreme indifference. It is an exceptional girl who can give her great-grandfather’s name, the exceptional boy who cannot give his genealogy in traditional form for several generations. While the boy of sixteen or seventeen is eagerly trying to master the esoteric allusiveness of the talking chief whose style he most admires, the girl of the same age learns the minimum of etiquette. Yet this is in no wise due to lack of ability. The taupo must have a meticulous knowledge, not only of the social arrangements of her own village, but also of those of neighbouring villages. She must serve visitors in proper form and with no hesitation after the talking chief has chanted their titles and the names of their kava cups. Should she take the wrong post which is the prerogative of another taupo who outranks her, her hair will be soundly pulled by her rival’s female attendants. She learns the intricacies of the social organisation as well as her brother does. Still more notable is the case of the wife of a talking chief. Whether she is chosen for her docility by a man who has already assumed his title, or whether, as is often the case, she marries some boy of her acquaintance who later is made a talking chief, the tausi, wife of a talking chief, is quite equal to the occasion. In the meetings of women she must be a master of etiquette and the native rules of order, she must interlard her speeches with a wealth of unintelligible traditional material and rich allusiveness, she must preserve the same even voice, the same lofty demeanour, as her husband. And ultimately, the wife of an important talking chief must qualify as a teacher as well as a performer, for it is her duty to train the taupo. But unless the community thus recognises her existence, and makes formal demand upon her time and ability, a woman gives to it a bare minimum of her attention.

In like manner, women are not dealt with in the primitive penal code. A man who commits adultery with a chief’s wife was beaten and banished, sometimes even drowned by the outraged community, but the woman was only cast out by her husband. The taupo who was found not to be a virgin was simply beaten by her female relatives. To-day if evil befalls the village, and it is attributed to some unconfessed sin on the part of a member of the community, the Fono and the Aumaga are convened and confession is enjoined upon any one who may have evil upon his conscience, but no such demand is made upon the Aualuma or the wives of the matais. This is in striking contrast to the family confessional where the sister is called upon first.

In matters of work the village makes a few precise demands. It is the women’s work to cultivate the sugar cane and sew the thatch for the roof of the guest house, to weave the palm leaf blinds, and bring the coral rubble for the floor. When the girls have a paper mulberry plantation, the Aumaga occasionally help them in the work, the girls in turn making a feast for the boys, turning the whole affair into an industrious picnic. But between men’s formal work and women’s formal work there is a rigid division. Women do not enter into house-building or boat-building activities, nor go out in fishing canoes, nor may men enter the formal weaving house or the house where women are making tapa in a group. If the women’s work makes it necessary for them to cross the village, as is the case when rubble is brought up from the seashore to make the floor of the guest house, the men entirely disappear, either gathering in some remote house, or going away to the bush or to another village. But this avoidance is only for large formal occasions. If her husband is building the family a new cook-house, a woman may make tapa two feet away, while a chief may sit and placidly braid cinet while his wife weaves a fine mat at his elbow.

So, although unlike her husband and brothers a woman spends most of her time within the narrower circle of her household and her relationship group, when she does participate in community affairs she is treated with the punctilio which marks all phases of Samoan social life. The better part of her attention and interest is focused on a smaller group, cast in a more personal mode. For this reason, it is impossible to evaluate accurately the difference in innate social drive between men and women in Samoa. In those social spheres where women have been given an opportunity, they take their place with as much ability as the men. The wives of the talking chiefs in fact exhibit even greater adaptability than their husbands. The talking chiefs are especially chosen for their oratorical and intellectual abilities, whereas the women have a task thrust upon them at their marriage requiring great oratorical skill, a fertile imagination, tact, and a facile memory.

VII

FORMAL SEX RELATIONS

The first attitude which a little girl learns towards boys is one of avoidance and antagonism. She learns to observe the brother and sister taboo towards the boys of her relationship group and household, and together with the other small girls of her age group she treats all other small boys as enemies elect. After a little girl is eight or nine years of age she has learned never to approach a group of older boys. This feeling of antagonism towards younger boys and shamed avoidance of older ones continues up to the age of thirteen or fourteen, to the group of girls who are just reaching puberty and the group of boys who have just been circumcised. These children are growing away from the age-group life and the age-group antagonisms. They are not yet actively sex-conscious. And it is at this time that relationships between the sexes are least emotionally charged. Not until she is an old married woman with several children will the Samoan girl again regard the opposite sex so quietly. When these adolescent children gather together there is a good-natured banter, a minimum of embarrassment, a great deal of random teasing which usually takes the form of accusing some little girl of a consuming passion for a decrepit old man of eighty, or some small boy of being the father of a buxom matron’s eighth child. Occasionally the banter takes the form of attributing affection between two age mates and is gaily and indignantly repudiated by both. Children at this age meet at informal siva parties, on the outskirts of more formal occasions, at community reef fishings (when many yards of reef have been enclosed to make a great fish trap) and on torch-fishing excursions. Good-natured tussling and banter and co-operation in common activities are the keynotes of these occasions. But unfortunately these contacts are neither frequent nor sufficiently prolonged to teach the girls co-operation or to give either boys or girls any real appreciation of personality in members of the opposite sex.