At the present time we live in a period of transition. We have many standards but we still believe that only one standard can be the right one. We present to our children the picture of a battle-field where each group is fully armoured in a conviction of the righteousness of its cause. And each of these groups make forays among the next generation. But it is unthinkable that a final recognition of the great number of ways in which man, during the course of history and at the present time, is solving the problems of life, should not bring with it in turn the downfall of our belief in a single standard. And when no one group claims ethical sanction for its customs, and each group welcomes to its midst only those who are temperamentally fitted for membership, then we shall have realised the high point of individual choice and universal toleration which a heterogeneous culture and a heterogeneous culture alone can attain. Samoa knows but one way of life and teaches it to her children. Will we, who have the knowledge of many ways, leave our children free to choose among them?
APPENDIX I
NOTES TO CHAPTERS
CHAPTER IV
Pages 43 to 45.
In the Samoan classification of relatives two principles, sex and age, are of the most primary importance. Relationship terms are never used as terms of address, a name or nickname being used even to father or mother. Relatives of the same age or within a year or two younger to five or ten years older are classified as of the speaker’s generation, and of the same sex or of the opposite sex. Thus a girl will call her sister, her aunt, her niece, and her female cousin who are nearly of the same age, uso, and a boy will do the same for his brother, uncle, nephew, or male cousin. For relationships between siblings of opposite sex there are two terms, tuafafine and tuagane, female relative of the same age group of a male, and male relative of the same age group of a female. (The term uso has no such subdivisions.)
The next most important term is applied to younger relatives of either sex, the word tei. Whether a child is so classified by an older relative depends not so much on how many years younger the child may be, but rather on the amount of care that the elder has taken of it. So a girl will call a cousin two years younger than herself her tei, if she has lived near by, but an equally youthful cousin who has grown up in a distant village until both are grown will be called uso. It is notable that there is no term for elder relative. The terms uso, tufafine and tuagane all carry the feeling of contemporaneousness, and if it is necessary to specify seniority, a qualifying adjective must be used.
Tamā, the term for father, is applied also to the matai of a household, to an uncle or older cousin with whose authority a younger person comes into frequent contact and also to a much older brother who in feeling is classed with the parent generation. Tinā is used only a little less loosely for the mother, aunts resident in the household, the wife of the matai and only very occasionally for an older sister.
A distinction is also made in terminology between men’s terms and women’s terms for the children. A woman will say tama (modified by the addition of the suffixes tane and fafine, male and female) and a man will say atalii, son and afafine, daughter. Thus a woman will say, “Losa is my tama,” specifying her sex only when necessary. But Losa’s father will speak of Losa as his afafine. The same usage is followed in speaking to a man or to a woman or a child. All of these terms are further modified by the addition of the word, moni, real, when a blood sister or blood father or mother is meant. The elders of the household are called roughly matua, and a grandparent is usually referred to as the toa’ina, the “old man” or olamatua, “old woman,” adding an explanatory clause if necessary. All other relatives are described by the use of relative clauses, “the sister of the husband of the sister of my mother,” “the brother of the wife of my brother,” etc. There are no special terms for the in-law group.