Then out of the group rose Maii, the leader. Silently he strode the full width of the space in front of the thirty seated men, leaning lightly upon the long rough stick in his hand. His giant-like figure was the personification of dignity; his roughened face the acme of sobriety; he seemed lost in thought. Facing about, he started to retrace his steps in front of the seated men, then, as though suddenly recollecting himself, turned his head in the direction of the king's hut and in a subdued tone no higher than that in ordinary conversation, addressed the house of Tamasese, which stood fully half a block away. Quietly, but not without emotion, he spoke and paused; and every time he paused the leading four men would shout "O-o-o-s-o-o," and the entire group would answer "O sa." Convincing and convinced, the leader proceeded with his oration. An hour later, to the minute, he finished.
At the king's house appeared an old man in a snow-white sulu, leaning heavily on a stick. I could see his lips moving, but could not hear a word. He was speaking to the leader, who could not hear any more than I. They kept up the pretense at conversation for a few minutes and all was agreed upon. A servant, who had followed the old man with a soft mat in his hand which to me looked like silk, advanced cautiously toward the warriors.
Two of them jumped instantly to their feet, brandishing their knife and ax furiously as though to protect the leader or to drive away evil spirits, I knew not which. But certain it was the cautious servant became still more cautious, timidly arriving with his offering and presenting it to the chief. The manner in which the gift was accepted, though solemn enough, was full of admonition, much as to say: "Now, don't you do that again." The mat-bearer's heart seemed relieved of a great terror, and he started back to the house of the king. On his way he passed a mango-tree, stopped, looked up as though he had spied an evil spirit, picked up a mango, stepped back, and dramatically hurled it at the tree as a boy would who was playing make-believe. At that the whole army of stalwarts rose and departed to the right.
As soon as they left the grounds, eleven girls, in single file, each with a mat of the loveliest texture imaginable flung to the breeze, came out upon the road from the other side of the grounds and followed round the front to the right after the way of the warriors. And the ceremony was over.
I had squatted on the ground, close to the warriors. They treated me as though I were an innocent child who did not know the dangers of evil things, nor enough to respect my superiors. Not so the natives. Even the policeman with whom I had arrived had retreated to the protection of a hut some three hundred feet away from the road. All the people in the neighborhood—men, women and children—kept within their own huts, their solemn faces full of awe and respect. Nor did the tension slacken until the last of the maidens had made her way out of sight.
Thus was the son of the last Samoan king escorted in safety along the other way,—a way which to the native mind seemed as vivid and real as heaven and hell were to Dante and Swedenborg.
3
Exit the Noble Savage. "Think," says Bancroft, spokesman of the arrogant "Blond Beast," "what it would mean to civilization if all these worthless primitives were to pass away before us." The beginning of this end was witnessed and told by Stevenson in 1892, but the natives' version of it has yet to be related. Against those who mourn his loss as the Hellenist the Greeks, are some of our most practical men.
The Samoans are not vanishing as rapidly as are the Hawaiians and the Maories, for two very simple reasons: their climate is not so suitable to the white man as is that of New Zealand and of Hawaii. Nor, like Fiji, has Samoa been hampered by indentured coolieism, though Chinese do come. Racially there seems no immediate prospect of Samoa being submerged, though politically it fell before Hawaii did. Socially, however, it is going, as are the native features of most of the more progressive and more assimilable peoples of the Pacific.
Simple naturalness is fast fading even from Samoa. I do not mean to say that because Samoans are drifting farther and farther from their primitive customs they are losing their "charm." With progress, one expects not oddity, but simplicity; not shiftlessness, but a certain tightening up of the finer fibers of the race. It is satisfying to see the contrast between the loosely built native hut and that whose pillars are set in concrete and roofed with durable materials. But it is disheartening when the change is only from thatch, which needs to be replaced every so often, to corrugated iron, without any other signs of durability. In other words, the corrugated iron roof is no proof that the race is becoming more thrifty, less lazy,—but the reverse. It indicates that indolence has found an easier way, a more permanent manner.