Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation
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COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
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 taufo 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 matals. 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 tlie""thatcE f or WeTooFoT'the giiest IlDiise^^to weave the palm leaf blinds, and bring the coral_rubble for tIie"~ffoof. When the girls "have 1a 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 indus-^>— trious 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
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THE GIRL IN THE COMMUNITY
makes it necessary for them to cross the village, as is the case when rubble is brough: 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 n 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-i social spheres where women have been given an oppor- I tunity, they take their place with as much ability as the I 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.
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 v/ith 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-eonscious. 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
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FORMAL SEX RELATIONS
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.
Two or three years later this will all be changed. The fact that little girls no longer belong to age groups makes the individual's defection less noticeable. The boy who begins to take an active interest in girls is also seen less in a gang and spends more time with one close companion. Girls have lost all of their nonchalance. They giggle, blush, bridle, run away. Boys become shy, embarrassed, taciturn, and avoid the society of girls in the daytime and on the brilliant moonlit nights for which they accuse the girls of having an exhibition-istic preference. Friendships fall more strictly within the relationship group. The boy's need for a trusted confidante is stronger than that of the girl, for only the most adroit and hardened Don Juans do their own
COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
courting. There are occasions, of course, when two youngsters just past adolescence, fearful of ridicule, even from their nearest friends and relatives, will slip away alone into the bush. More frequently still an older man, a widower or a divorced man, will be a girl's first lover. And here there is no need for an ambassador. The older man is neither shy nor frightened, and furthermore there is no one whom he can trust as an intermediary; a younger man would betray hjm, an older man would not take his amours seriously, j But the first spontaneous experiment of adolescent chil-/ dren and the amorous excursions of the older men among the young girls of the village are variants on the edge of the recognised types of relationships j so also is the first experience of a young boy with an older woman. But both of these are exceedingly frequent occurrences, so that the success of an amatory experience is seldom jeopardised by double ignorance. Nevertheless, all of these occasions are outside the recognised forms into which sex relations fall. The little boy and girl are branded by their companions as guilty of tautala lai t'ltl (presuming above their ages) as is the boy who loves or aspires to love an older woman, while the idea of an older man pursuing a young girl appeals strongly to their sense of humour j or if the girl is very young and naive, to their sense of unfitness. "She is too young, too young yet. He is too old," they will say, and the whole weight of vigorous disapproval fell upon a matal who was known to be
FORMAL SEX RELATIONS
the father of the child of Lotu, the sixteen-year-old feeble-minded girl on Olesega. Discrepancy in age or experience always strikes them as comic or pathetic according to the degree. The theoretical punishment which is meted out to a disobedient and runaway daughter is to marry her to a very old man, and I have heard a nine-year-old giggle contemptuously over her mother's preference for a seventeen-year-old boy. Worst among these unpatterned deviations is that of the man who makes love to some young and dependent woman of his household, his adopted child or his wife's younger sister. The cry of incest is raised against him and sometimes feeling runs so high that he has to leave the group.
Besides formal marriage there are only two types of sex relations which receive any formal recognition from the community^love affairs between unmarried young people (this includes the widowed) who are very nearly of the same age, whether leading to marriage or merely a passing diversion j and adultery.
Between the unmarried there are three forms of relationship: the clandestine encounter, "unde
r the palm trees," the published elopement, Avaga, and the ^ ceremonious courtship in which the boy "sits before the girl"} and on the edge of these, the curious form of surreptitious rape, called nioetotoloy sleep crawling, resorted to by youths who find favour in no maiden's eyes.
In these three relationships, the boy requires a con-
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COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
fidant and ambassador whom he calls a soa. Where boys are close companions, this relationship may extend over many love affairs, or it may be a temporary one, terminating with the particular love affair. The soa follows the pattern of the talking chief who makes material demands upon his chief in return for the immaterial services which he renders him. If marriage results from his ambassadorship, he receives a specially fine present from the bridegroom. The choice of a soa presents many difficulties. If the lover chooses a steady, reliable boy, some slightly younger relative devoted to his interests, a boy unambitious in affairs of the heart, very likely the ambassador will bungle the whole affair through inexperience and lack of tact. But if he chooses a handsome and expert wooer who knows just how "to speak softly and walk gently," then as likely as not the girl will prefer the second to the principal. This difficulty is occasionally anticipated by employing two or three soas and setting them to spy on each other. But such a lack of trust is likely to inspire a similar attitude in the agents, and as one overcautious and disappointed lover told me ruefully, "I had five soasy one was true and four were false."
Among possible soas there are two preferences, a brother or a girl. . A brother is by definition loyal, while a girl is far more skilful for "a boy can only approach a girl in the evening, or when no one is by, but a girl can go with her all day long, walk with her and lie on the mat by her, eat off the same platter, and
FORMAL SEX RELATIONS
whisper between mouthfuls the name of the boy, speaking ever of him, how good he is, how gentle and how true, how worthy of love. Yes, best of all is the soafafiney the woman ambassador." But the difficulties of obtaining a soafafine are great. A boy may not^ choose from his own female relatives. The taboo forbids him ever to mention such matters in their presence. It is only by good chance that his brother's sweetheart may be a relative of the girl upon whom he has set his heart j or some other piece of good fortune may throw him into contact with a girl or woman who will act in his interests. The most violent antagonisms in the young people's groups are not between ex-lovers, arise not from the venom of the deserted nor the smarting pride of the jilted, but occur between the boy and the soa who has betrayed him, or a lover and the friend of his beloved who has in any way blocked his suit.
In the strictly clandestine love affair the lover never presents himself at the house of his beloved. His soa may go there in a group or upon some trumped-up errand, or he also may avoid the house and find opportunities to speak to the girl while she is fishing or going to and from the plantation. It is his task to sing his friend's praise, counteract the girl's fears and objections, and finally appoint a rendezvous. These affairs are usually of short duration and both boy and girl may be carrying on several at once. One of the recognised causes of a quarrel is the resentment of the
COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
first lover against his successor of the same night, "for the boy who came later will mock him." These clandestine lovers make their rendezvous on the outskirts of the village. "Under the palm trees" is the conventionalised designation of this type of intrigue. Very often three or four couples will have a common rendezvous, when either the boys or the girls are relatives who are friends. Should the girl ever grow faint or dizzy, it is the boy's part to climb the nearest palm and fetch down a fresh cocoanut to pour on her face in lieu of eau de cologne. In native theory, barrenness is the punishment of promiscuity j and, vice versa, only persistent monogamy is rewarded by conception. When a pair of clandestine experimenters whose rank is so low that their marriages are not of any great economic importance become genuinely attached to each other and maintain the relationship over several months, marriage often follows. And native sophistication distinguishes between the adept lover whose adventures are many and of short duration and the less skilled man who can find no better proof of his virility than a long affair ending in conception.
Often the girl is afraid to venture out into the night, infested with ghosts and devils, ghosts that strangle one, ghosts from far-away villages who come in canoes to kidnap the girls of the village, ghosts who leap upon the back and may not be shaken off. Or she may feel that it is wiser to remain at home, and if necessary, attest her presence vocally. In this case the lover
FORMAL SEX RELATIONS
braves the house j taking off his lavalava, he greases his body thoroughly with cocoanut oil so that he can slip through the fingers of pursuers and leave no trace, and stealthily raises the blinds and slips into the house. The prevalence of this practice gives point to the familiar incident in Polynesian folk tales of the ill fortune that falls the luckless hero who "sleeps until morning, until the rising sun reveals his presence to the other inmates of the house." As perhaps a dozen or more people and several dogs are sleeping in the house, a due regard for silence is sufficient precaution. But it is this habit of domestic rendezvous which lends . y itself to the peculiar abuse of the moetotoloy or sleep crawler.
The moetotolo is the only sex activity which presents a definitely abnormal picture. Ever since the first contact with white civilisation, rape, in the form of vio- -' lent assault, has occurred occasionally in Samoa. It is far less congenial, however, to the Samoan attitude than moetotoloy in which a man stealthily appropriates the favours which are meant for another. The need for guarding against discovery makes conversation impossible, and the sleep crawler relies upon the girPs expecting a lover or the chance that she will indiscriminately accept any comer. If the girl suspects and resents him, she raises a great outcry and the whole household gives chase. fCatching a moetotolo is countedji great sport, and the women, who feel their safety en-|^ dangered, are even more active in pursuit than the i
COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
men. One luckless youth in Luma neglected to remove his lavalava. The girl discovered him and her sister succeeded in biting a piece out of his lavalava before he escaped. This she proudly exhibited the next day. As the boy had been too dull to destroy his lavalava, the evidence against him was circumstantial and he was the laughing stock of the village j the children wrote a dance song about it and sang it after him wherever he went. The moetotolo problem is complicated by the possibility that a boy of the household may be the offender and may take refuge in the hue and cry following the discovery. It also provides the girl with an excellent alibi, since she has only to call out "moetotolo^^ in case her lover is discovered. "To the family and the village that may be a moetotoloy but it is not so in the hearts of the girl and the boy." Two. motives a,re given for this unsavoury activity, anger and failure in love. The Samoan girl who plays the coquette does so at her peril. "She will say, *Yes, I will meet you to-night by that old cocoanut tree just beside the devilfish stone when the moon goes down.' And the boy will wait and wait and wait all night long. It will grow very darkj lizards will drop on his head; the ghost boats will come into the channel. He will be very much afraid. But he will wait there until dawn, until his hair is wet with dew and his heart is very angry and still she does not come. Then in revenge he will attempt a moetotolo. Especially will he do so if he hears that she has met another that night."
FORMAL SEX RELATIONS
The other set explanation is that a particular boy cannot win a sweetheart by any legitimate means, and there is no form of prostitution, except guest prostitution in Samoa. As some of the boys who were notorious 7noetotolos were among the most charming and good-looking youths of the village, this is a little hard to understand. Apparently, these youths, frowned upon in one or two tentative courtships, inflamed by the loudly proclaimed success of their fellows and the taunts against their ow
n inexperience, cast established wooing procedure to the winds and attempt a moeto-tolo. And once caught, once branded, no girl will ever pay any attention to them again. They must wait until as older men, with position and title to offer, they can choose between some weary and bedraggled wanton or the unwilling young daughter of ambitious and selfish parents. But years will intervene before this is possible, and shut out from the amours in which his companions are engaging, a boy makes one attempt after another, sometimes successfully, sometimes only to be caught and beaten, mocked by the village, and always digging the pit deeper under his feet. Often partially satisfactory solutions are relationships with men. There was one such pair in the village, a notorious tnoetotoloy and a serious-minded youth who wished to keep his heart free for political intrigue. The moeto-tolo therefore complicates and adds zest to the surreptitious love-making which is conducted at home, while the danger of being missed, the undesirability of chance
COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
encounters abroad, rain and the fear of ghosts, complicate "love under the palm trees." .♦ Between these strictly suh rosa affairs and a final offer of marriage there is an intermediate form of courtship in which the girl is called upon by the boy. As this is^ regarded as a tentative move towards matrimony, both relationship groups must be more or less favourably inclined towards the union. With his soa at his side and provided with a basket of fish, an octopus or so, or a chicken, the suitor presents himself at the girPs home before the late evening meal. If his gift is accepted, it is a sign that the family of the girl are willing for him to pay his addresses to her. He is formally welcomed by the mata'ty sits with reverently bowed head throughout the evening prayer, and then he and his soa stay for supper. But the suitor does not approach his beloved. They say: "If you wish to know who is really the lover, look then not at the boy who sits by her side, looks boldly into her eyes and twists the flowers in her necklace around his fingers or steals the hibiscus flower from her hair that he may wear it behind his ear. Do not think it is he who whispers softly in her ear, or says to her, ^Sweetheart, wait for me to-night. After the moon has set, I will come to you,' or who teases her by saying she has many lovers. Look instead at the boy who sits afar off, who sits with bent head and takes no part in the joking. And you will see that his eyes are always turned softly on the girl. Always he watches her and never does he miss a movement of her lips.