Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before Part 14

The Samoans have a tradition that of old their forefathers had no houses. They say that in those days the people were "housed by the heavens," and describe the ingenuity of a chief who first contrived to build houses. He had two sons, and out of love to them built for each of them a house. But leaving tradition let me describe the houses to be seen at the present day in some of the villages, and the counterpart of those which have been in use for ages. Imagine a gigantic bee-hive, thirty-five feet in diameter, a hundred in circ.u.mference, and raised from the ground by a number of short posts, at intervals of four feet from each other all round, and you have a good idea of the appearance of a Samoan house.

The s.p.a.ces between these posts, which may be called open doors or windows all round the house, are shut in at night by roughly-plaited cocoa-nut leaf blinds. During the day the blinds are pulled up, and all the interior exposed to a free current of air. The floor is raised six or eight inches with rough stones, then an upper layer of smooth pebbles, then some cocoa-nut leaf mats, and then a layer of finer matting. Houses of important chiefs are erected on a raised platform of stones three feet high. In the centre of the house there are two, and sometimes three, posts or pillars, twenty feet long, sunk three feet into the ground, and extending to and supporting the ridge pole.

These are the main props of the building. Any _Samson_ or giant _Tafai_ pulling them away would bring down the whole house. The s.p.a.ce between the rafters is filled up with what they call _ribs_--viz. the wood of the bread-fruit tree, split up into small pieces, and joined together so as to form a long rod the thickness of the thumb, running from the ridge pole down to the eaves. All are kept in their places, an inch and a half apart, by cross pieces, made fast with cinnet. The whole of this upper cagelike work looks compact and tidy, and at the first glance is admired by strangers as being alike novel, ingenious, and neat. The wood of the bread-fruit tree, of which the greater part of the best houses are built, is durable, and, if preserved from wet, will last fifty years.

The thatch also is laid on with great care and taste; the long dry leaves of the sugar-cane are strung on to pieces of reed five feet long; they are made fast to the reed by overlapping the one end of the leaf, and pinning it with the rib of the cocoa-nut leaflet run through from leaf to leaf horizontally. These reeds, thus fringed with the sugar-cane leaves hanging down three or four feet, are laid on, beginning at the eaves and running up to the ridge pole, each one overlapping its fellow an inch or so, and made fast one by one with cinnet to the inside rods or rafters. Upwards of a hundred of these reeds of thatch will be required for a single row running from the eaves to the ridge pole; then they do another row, and so on all round the house. Two, three, or four thousand of these fringed reeds may be required for a good-sized house. This thatching, if well done, will last for seven years. To collect the sugar-cane leaves, and "sew," as it is called, the ends on to the reeds, is the work of the women. An active woman will sew fifty reeds in a day, and three men will put up and fasten on to the roof of the house some five hundred in a day.

Corrugated iron, s.h.i.+ngles, and other contrivances, are being tried by European residents; but, for coolness and ventilation, nothing beats the thatch. The great drawback is, that in gales it stands up like a field of corn, and then the rain pours into the house. That, however, may be remedied by a network of cinnet, to keep down the thatch, or by the native plan of covering all in with a layer of heavy cocoa-nut leaves on the approach of a gale.

These great circular roofs are so constructed that they can be lifted bodily off the posts, and removed anywhere, either by land, or by a raft of canoes. But in removing a house, they generally divide the roof into four parts--viz. the two sides, and the two ends, where there are particular joints left by the carpenters, which can easily be untied, and again fastened. There is not a single nail in the whole building; all is made fast with cinnet. As Samoan houses often form presents, fines, dowries, as well as articles of barter, they are frequently removed from place to place. The arrangement of the houses in a village has no regard whatever to order. You rarely see three houses in a line. Every one puts his house on his little plot of ground, just as the shade of the trees, the direction of the wind, the height of the ground, etc., may suit his fancy.

A house, after the usual Samoan fas.h.i.+on just described, has but _one_ apartment. It is the common parlour, dining-room, etc., by day, and the bedroom of the whole family by night. They do not, however, altogether herd indiscriminately. If you peep into a Samoan house at midnight, you will see five or six low oblong _tents_ pitched (or rather strung up) here and there throughout the house. They are made of native cloth, five feet high, and close all round down to the mat.

They shut out the mosquitoes, and enclose a place some eight feet by five; and these said tent-looking places may be called the _bedrooms_ of the family. Four or five mats laid loosely, the one on the top of the other, form the _bed_. The _pillow_ is a piece of thick bamboo, three inches in diameter, three to five feet long, and raised three inches from the mat by short wooden feet. The sick are indulged with something softer, but the hard bamboo is the invariable pillow of health. The _bedding_ in old times was complete with a single mat or sheet of native cloth. In the morning the tent was unstrung, mats, pillow, and sheet rolled together, and laid up overhead on a shelf between the posts in the middle of the house.

These rolls of mats and bedding, a bundle or two done up in native cloth on the same shelf in the centre of the house, a basket, a fan or two, and a bamboo knife stuck into the thatch within reach, a fis.h.i.+ng-net, a club, and some spears strung up along the rafters, a few paddles, and a few cocoa-nut sh.e.l.l water-bottles, were about all the things in the shape of furniture or property to be seen in looking into a Samoan house. The fire-place was about the middle of the house.

It was merely a circular hollow, two or three feet in diameter, a few inches deep, and lined with hardened clay. It was not used for cooking, but for the purpose of lighting up the house at night. A _flaming fire_, as we have already remarked (p. 75), was the regular evening offering to the G.o.ds, as the family bowed the head, and the fathers prayed for prosperity from the "G.o.ds great and small." The women collected during the day a supply of dried cocoa-nut leaves, etc., which, with a little management, kept up a continued blaze in the evening, while the a.s.sembled family group had their supper and prayer, and sat together chatting for an hour or two afterwards.

But about _house-building_: it was a distinct trade in Samoa; and perhaps, on an average, you might find one among every three hundred men who was a master carpenter. Whenever this person went to work he had in his train some ten or twelve, who followed him, some as journeymen, who expected payment from him, and others as apprentices, who were princ.i.p.ally anxious to learn the trade. When a young man took a fancy to the trade he had only to go and attach himself to the staff of some master carpenter, follow him from place to place for a few years, until he thought he could take the lead in building a house himself; and whenever he could point to a house which he had built, that set him up as a professed carpenter, and he would from that time be employed by others.

If a person wished a house built, he went with a fine mat, worth in modern cash value 20s. or 30s. He told the carpenter what he wanted, and presented him with the mat as a pledge that he should be well paid for his work. If he accepted the mat, that was a pledge that he undertook the job. Nothing was stipulated as to the cost; that was left entirely to the honour of the employing party. At an appointed time the carpenter came with his staff of helpers and learners. Even now their only tools are a felling-axe, a hatchet, and a small adze; and there they sit, chop, chop, chopping, for three, six, or nine months it may be, until the house is finished. Their _adze_ reminds us of ancient Egypt. It is formed by the head of a small hatchet, or any other flat piece of iron, lashed on, at an angle of forty-five, to the end of a small piece of wood, eighteen inches long, as its handle. Of old they used stone and sh.e.l.l axes and adzes.

The man whose house is being built provides the carpenters with board and lodging, and is also at hand with his neighbours to help in bringing wood from the bush, scaffolding, and other heavy work. As we have just remarked, a Samoan house-builder made no definite charge, but left the price of his work to the judgment, generosity, and means of the person who employed him. It was a lasting disgrace to any one to have it said that he paid his carpenter shabbily. It branded him as a person of no rank or respectability, and was disreputable, not merely to himself, but to the whole family or _clan_ with which he was connected. The entire tribe or clan was his _bank_. Being connected with that particular tribe, either by birth or marriage, gave him a latent interest in all their property, and ent.i.tled him to go freely to any of his friends to ask for help in paying his house-builder. He would get a mat from one, worth twenty s.h.i.+llings; from another he might get one more valuable still; from another some native cloth, worth five s.h.i.+llings; from another, some foreign property; and thus he might collect, with but little trouble, two or three hundred useful articles, worth, perhaps, forty or fifty pounds; and in this way the carpenter was generally well paid. Now and then there might be a stingy exception; but the carpenter, from certain indications, generally saw ahead, and decamped, with all his party, leaving the house unfinished. It was a standing custom, that after the sides and one end of the house were finished, the princ.i.p.al part of the payment was made; and it was at this time that a carpenter, if he was dissatisfied, would get up and walk off. A house with two sides and but one end, and the carpenters away, was indicative. Nor could the chief to whom the house belonged employ another party to finish it. It was a fixed rule of the trade, and rigidly adhered to, that no one would take up the work which another party had thrown down. The chief, therefore, had no alternative but to go and make up matters with the original carpenter, in order to have his house decently completed.

When a house was finished, and all ready for occupation, they had their "house-warming," or, as they called it, its _oven consecration_; and formerly it was the custom to add on to that a night dance, for the purpose, they said, of "treading down the beetles."

The system of a common interest in each other's property, to which we have referred, is still clung to by the Samoans with great tenacity.

They feel its advantages when they wish to raise a little. Not only a house, but also a canoe, a boat, a fine, a dowry, and everything else requiring an extra effort, is got up in the same way. They consider themselves at liberty to go and take up their abode anywhere among their friends, and remain without charge, as long as they please. And the same custom ent.i.tles them to beg and borrow from each other to any extent. Boats, tools, garments, money, etc., are all freely lent to each other, if connected with the same tribe or clan. A man cannot bear to be called stingy or disobliging. If he has what is asked, he will either give it, or adopt the worse course of telling a lie about it, by saying that he has it not, or that it is promised to some one else. This communistic system is a sad hindrance to the industrious, and eats like a canker-worm at the roots of individual or national progress. No matter how hard a young man may be disposed to work, he cannot keep his earnings: all soon pa.s.ses out of his hands into the common circulating currency of the clan to which all have a latent right. The only thing which reconciles one to bear with it until it gives place to the individual independence of more advanced civilisation, is the fact that, with such a state of things, no "poor laws" are needed. The sick, the aged, the blind, the lame, and even the vagrant, has always a house and home, and food and raiment, as far as he considers he needs it. A stranger may, at first sight, think a Samoan one of the poorest of the poor, and yet he may live ten years with that Samoan and not be able to make him understand what _poverty_ really is, in the European sense of the word. "How is it?" he will always say. "_No food!_ Has he no friends? _No house to live in!_ Where _did_ he grow? Are there no houses belonging to his friends?

Have the people there no love for each other?"

CHAPTER XIV.

CANOES.

Next to a well-built house, Samoan ingenuity was seen in their canoes.

Any one could fell a tree, cut off the branches, and hollow out the log some fifteen feet long, for a common fis.h.i.+ng canoe in which one or two men can sit. But the more carefully-built canoe, with a number of separate planks raised from a keel, was the work of a distinct and not very numerous cla.s.s of professed carpenters. The keel was laid in one piece, twenty-five to fifty feet long, as the size of the canoe might be, and to that they added board after board, not by overlapping and nailing, but by _sewing_ each close to its fellow, until they had raised it some two, or, it might be, three feet from the ground. These boards were not sawn, squared, and uniform, but were a number of pieces, or _patches_, as they are called, varying in size from eighteen inches to five feet long, as the wood split up from the log with felling axes happens to suit; all, however, were well fastened together, and, with the help of a little gum of the bread-fruit tree for pitch, the whole was perfectly water-tight. In dressing each board, they left a ledge, or rim, all round the edge, which was to be inside, making it double the thickness at the edge to what it was in the middle of the board. It is through this ledge or rim they bored the holes, and with a few turns of cinnet sewed tight one board to the other. The sewing only appeared on the inside. Outside all was smooth and neat; and it was only on close inspection you could see that there was a join at all. They had timbers, thwarts, and gunwale, to keep all tight; and over a few feet at the bow and the stern they had a deck, under which they could stow away anything. The decked part at the bow was the seat of honour, and there you generally saw the chief of the travelling party sitting cross-legged, at his ease, while the others were paddling.

The width of a canoe varied from eighteen to thirty inches; the length, from fifteen to fifty feet. But for an outrigger, it was impossible to keep such a long, narrow thing steady in the water. The outrigger may be described, in any boat, by laying oars across at equal distances, say one right above a thwart. Make fast the handle of each oar to the gunwale on the starboard side of the boat, and let the oars project on the larboard side. To the end of each projecting oar make fast four small sticks running down towards the water, and let their ends also be fastened to a long thick piece of wood, sharp at the one end to cut through the water, and floating on the surface parallel to the boat. This being done will give any one an exact idea of a Polynesian outrigger, by means of which long narrow canoes are kept steady in the water.

Some people who sketch and engrave from imagination, err in representing the natives of Samoa as _pulling_ their short paddles, as the European boatman pulls his long oars. The paddle is about four feet long, something like a sharp-pointed shovel; and when the natives paddle, they sit with their faces in the direction in which the canoe is going, "_dig_" in their paddles, send the water flying behind them, and forward the canoe shoots at the rate of seven miles an hour. They have always a sail for their canoe, as well as paddles, to take advantage of a fair wind. The sail is triangular, and made of matting.

When set, the base is up, and the apex down, quite the reverse of what we see in some other islands. The _mat_ sails, however, are giving place to cloth ones, made in the form of European boat-sails.

Some two or three generations back the Samoans built large double canoes like the Fijians. Latterly they seldom built anything larger than a single canoe, with an outrigger, which might carry from fifteen to twenty people. Within the last few years the native carpenters have tried their hand at boat-building, and it is astonis.h.i.+ng to see how well they have succeeded in copying the model of an English or American whaleboat, sharp at both ends, or having "two bows," as they call it. Some of them are fifty feet long, and carry well on to one hundred people. From stem to stern there is not a nail; everything is fastened in their ancient style, with cinnet plaited from the fibre of the cocoa-nut husk. Cinnet is likely long to prevail in _native_ canoe and boat-building. Although it looks clumsy, it has the advantage of not rotting the wood like an iron nail. It is durable also. With care, and the sewing once or twice renewed, a Samoan canoe or boat will last ten or twenty years.

They did not paint their canoes, but decorated them with rows of white sh.e.l.ls (_Cypraea ovula_) running along the middle of the deck at the bow and stern, and also along the upper part of the outrigger. Now and then they had a figure-head with some rude device of a human figure, a dog, a bird, or something else, which had from time immemorial been the "coat-of-arms" of the particular village or district to which the canoe belonged. A chief of importance must also have one, or perhaps two, large sh.e.l.ls in his canoe, to answer the purpose of trumpets, to blow now and then as the canoe pa.s.sed along. It attracted the attention of the villagers, and called them out to look and inquire, "Who is that?" The ambition to see and to be seen was as common in Polynesia as anywhere else. As the canoe approached any princ.i.p.al settlement, or when it reached its destination, there was a special too-too-too, or flourish of their sh.e.l.l trumpets, to herald its approach. The paddlers at the same time struck up some lively chant, and, as the canoe touched the beach, all was wound up with a united shout, having more of the _yell_ in it, but the same in meaning as a "hip, hip, hurrah!"

The French navigator Bougainville, seeing the Samoans so often moving about in their canoes, named the group "The Navigators." A stranger in the distance, judging from the name, may suppose that the Samoans are noted among the Polynesians as enterprising navigators. This is not the case. They are quite a domestic people, and rarely venture out of sight of land. The group, however, is extensive, and gives them some scope for travel. It numbers ten inhabited islands, and stretches east and west about 200 miles. Within these bounds they have kept up an intercourse from the earliest times in their history, which is fully proved, not only by tradition, but by the uniformity of customs and language which prevails from the one end of the group to the other.

CHAPTER XV.

ARTICLES OF MANUFACTURE.

_Fis.h.i.+ng-nets_ of various kinds were in use, and were all manufactured on the islands. Several of the Polynesian tribes excel in this branch of industry. A captain of a s.h.i.+p of war, who was buying curiosities lately at Savage Island, actually refused their fine small fis.h.i.+ng-nets, thinking that they must be articles of _European_ manufacture. In Samoa, net-making is the same now as it was of old. It is the work of the women, and confined princ.i.p.ally to the _inland_ villages. One would have thought that it would be the reverse, and that the _coast_ districts would have made it their princ.i.p.al business. The trade being confined to the interior, is probably occasioned by its proximity to the raw material which abounds in the bush, viz. the bark of the hibiscus, already referred to in describing "fine mats."

After the rough outer surface of the bark has been sc.r.a.ped off with a sh.e.l.l on a board, the remaining fibres are twisted with the mere palm of the hand across the bare thigh into a strong whip-cord, or finer twine, according to the size of the meshes of the net. As the good lady's cord lengthens, she fills her netting-needle, and when that is full, works it into her net. Their wooden netting-needles are exactly the same in form as those in common use in Europe. One evening, in taking a walk, Mrs. Turner and I stood for a few minutes and looked at a woman working a net. Mrs. Turner begged to be allowed to do a bit, took the needle, and did a few loops, to the no small amazement of the woman, who wondered how a European lady could know how to handle a _Samoan_ netting-needle, and do _Samoan_ work.

They make nets of all sizes, from the small one of eighteen inches square to the seine of a hundred feet long. A net forty feet long and twelve feet deep can be had for native mats, or white calico, to the value of twenty s.h.i.+llings. A hundred men may be able to muster some twenty nets. These they unite together, and, in the lagoon off their settlement, take large quant.i.ties of mullet and other fish.

_The pearl-sh.e.l.l fish-hook_ is another article long in use, and in the manufacture of which the Samoans show some ingenuity. They cut a strip off the sh.e.l.l, from two to three inches long, and rub it smooth on a stone, so as to resemble a small fish. On the under side, or what may be called the belly, of this little mock fish, they fasten a hook made of tortoise-sh.e.l.l, or, it may be, nowadays, an English steel one.

Alongside of the hook, concealing its point, and in imitation of the fins of a little fish, they fasten two small white feathers. Without any bait, this pearl-sh.e.l.l contrivance is cast adrift at the stern of a canoe, with a line of twenty feet, and from its striking resemblance to a little fish it is soon caught at, and in this way the Samoans secure a large quant.i.ty of their favourite food. No European fish-hook has yet superseded this purely native invention. They bait and use the steel fish-hook, however, and in some cases use it on their pearl-sh.e.l.ls, as we have just remarked, instead of the tortoise-sh.e.l.l fish-hook.

_A curious native drill_ is seen in connection with the manufacture of these little sh.e.l.l fish-hooks. Fine holes are drilled through the sh.e.l.l for the purpose of making fast the hook as well as the line, and the instrument to which we refer answers the purpose admirably. For the sake of comparison with other parts of the world, this simple contrivance is worth a few lines of description. Take a piece of wood, eighteen inches long, twice the thickness of a cedar pencil. Fasten with a strong thread a fine-pointed nail, or a sail-needle, to the end of this sort of spindle. Get a thick piece of wood, about the size of what is called in England a "hot cross bun," and in Scotland a "cookie," bore a hole in the centre of it, run the spindle through it, and wedge it fast about the middle of the spindle. At the top of the spindle fasten two strings, each nine inches long, to the ends of these strings attach the ends of a common cedar pencil, forming a triangle with a wooden base and string sides. Stand up the machine with your left hand, place the iron point where you wish to bore a hole, and steady the spindle with your left hand. Take hold of the pencil handle of the upper triangle, twirl round the spindle with your left hand, which will coil on the strings at the top to the spindle, pull down the pencil handle quickly, and then the machine will spin round. Work the handle in this way up and down, like a pump, the cord will alternately run off and on to the spindle, and the machine will continue to whirl round, first one way and then the other, until the pearl-sh.e.l.l, or whatever it may be, is perforated.

There is hardly anything else in the department of manufacture requiring particular notice. When speaking of garments, we referred to _native cloth_ and _mats_. Large quant.i.ties of _cinnet_ are plaited by the old men princ.i.p.ally. They sit at their ease in their houses, and twist away very rapidly. At political meetings also, where there are hours of formal palaver and speechifying, the old men take their work with them, and improve the time at the cleanly, useful occupation of twisting cinnet. It is a subst.i.tute for twine, and useful for many a purpose, and is now sold to the merchants at about a s.h.i.+lling per pound. _Baskets_ and _fans_ are made as of old of the cocoa-nut leaflet, _floor mats_ and a finer kind of baskets from the panda.n.u.s leaf. Twenty or thirty pieces of the rib of the cocoa-nut leaflet, fastened close together with a thread of cinnet, form a _comb_. Oval _tubs_ are made by hollowing out a block of wood. _Clubs_, three feet long, from the iron-wood, or something else that is heavy. _Spears_, eight feet long, were made from the cocoa-nut tree, and barbed with the sting of the ray-fish; a wicked contrivance, for it was meant to break off from the spear in the body of the unhappy victim. In nine cases out of ten there was no way of cutting it out, and the poor creature died in agony.

The Samoans are an agricultural rather than a manufacturing people. In addition to their own individual wants, their hospitable custom in supplying, without money and without stint, the wants of visitors from all parts of the group, was a great drain on their plantations. The fact that a party of natives could travel from one end of the group to the other without a penny of expense for food and lodging, was an encouragement to pleasure excursions, friendly visits, and all sorts of travelling. Hardly a day pa.s.sed without there being some strangers in the "guest house" of the village, to be provided for by a contribution from every family in the place. After meeting fully, however, all home wants, large quant.i.ties of yams, taro, and bananas, with pigs and poultry, were still to spare, and were sold to the s.h.i.+ps which called for water and supplies.

CHAPTER XVI.

GOVERNMENT AND LAWS.

A hurried glance, from a European stand-point, has caused many pa.s.sing visitors to conclude that the Samoans had nothing whatever in the shape of government or laws. In sailing along the coast of any island of the group, you can hardly discern anything but one uninterrupted ma.s.s of bush and vegetation, from the beach to the top of the mountains; but, on landing, and minutely inspecting place after place, you find villages, plantations, roads, and boundary walls, in all directions along the coast. It is the same with their political aspect. It is not until you have landed, lived among the people, and for years closely inspected their movements, that you can form a correct opinion of the exact state of affairs. To any one acquainted with the aborigines of various parts of the world, and especially those of the Papuan groups in Western Polynesia, the simple fact that the Samoans have had but one dialect, and free intercourse with each other all over the group, is proof positive that there must have long existed there _some_ system of government.

A good deal of order was maintained by the union of two things, viz.

_civil power_ and _superst.i.tious fear_.

I. As to the first of these, their government had, and still has, more of the patriarchal and democratic in it, than of the monarchical. Take a village, containing a population, say, of three to five hundred, and there will probably be found there from ten to twenty t.i.tled heads of families, and one of the higher rank called chiefs. The t.i.tles of the heads of families are not hereditary. The son may succeed to the t.i.tle which his father had, but it may be given to an uncle, or a cousin, and sometimes the son is pa.s.sed over, and the t.i.tle given, by common consent, to a perfect stranger, merely for the sake of drawing him in, to increase the numerical strength of the family. What I now call a family is a combined group of sons, daughters, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, etc., and may number fifty individuals. They have one large house, as a common rendezvous, and for the reception of visitors, and four or five other houses, all near each other.

The chiefs, on the other hand, are a most select cla.s.s, whose pedigree is traced most carefully in the traditionary genealogies to the ancient head of some particular clan. One is chosen to bear the t.i.tle, but there may be other individuals, who trace their origin to the same stock, call themselves chiefs too, and any of whom may succeed to the t.i.tle on the death of the one who bears it. A chief, before he dies, may name some one to succeed him, but the final decision rests with the heads of families as to which of the members of the chief family shall have the t.i.tle and be regarded as the village chief. In some cases the greater part of a village is composed of parties who rank as chiefs, but, as a general rule, it consists of certain families of the more common order, which we have just mentioned, and some t.i.tled chief, to whom the village looks up as their political head and protector. It is usual, in the courtesies of common conversation, for all to call each other chiefs. If you listen to the talk of little boys even, you will hear them addressing each other as _chief_ this, that, and the other thing. Hence, I have heard a stranger remark, that the difficulty in Samoa is, not to find who is a chief, but to find out who is a common man.

As the chief can call to his aid, in any emergency, other chiefs connected with the same ancient stock from which he has sprung, and as he looks upon the entire village as his children, and feels bound to avenge their wrongs, it is thought essential to have some such head in every settlement. If anything in the clubbing way is to be done, no one but the chief, or his brother, or his son, dare do it. With few exceptions, he moves about, and shares in every-day employments, just like a common man. He goes out with the fis.h.i.+ng party, works in his plantation, helps at house-building, and lends a hand at the native oven. There are still, however, although not at first sight to a European eye, well-defined marks of his chieftains.h.i.+p. If you listen to the conversation of the people, or attend a meeting of the heads of families for any village business, you hear that he is addressed with such formalities as might be translated into our English Earl, Duke, Prince, or King So-and-so; and, instead of the plebeian _you_, it is, your Highness, your Grace, your Lords.h.i.+p, or your Majesty. When the ava-bowl is filled, and the cup of friends.h.i.+p sent round, the first cup is handed to him. The turtle, too, the best joint, and anything choice, is sure to be laid before the chief. Then again, if he wishes to marry, the heads of families vie with each other in supplying him with all that is necessary to provide for the feasting, and other things connected with the ceremonies. He, on the other hand, has to give them ample compensation for all this, by distributing among them the fine mats which he gets as the dowry by his bride. A chief is careful to marry only in the family of a chief, and hence he has, by his wife, a portion worthy of the rank of a chief's daughter. To some extent, these heads of families are the _bankers_ of the chief. His fine mats almost all go to them, and other property too. They, again, are ready with a supply whenever he wishes to draw upon them, whether for fine mats, food, or other property.

No lover of money was ever fonder of gold than a Samoan was of his fine mats. Hence the more wives the chief wished to have, the better the heads of families liked it, as every marriage was a fresh source of fine mat gain. To such an extent was this carried on, that one match was hardly over before another was in contemplation. If it did not originate with the chief, the heads of families would be concocting something, and marking out the daughter of some one as the object of the next fine mat speculation. The chief would yield to them, have the usual round of ceremonies, but without the remotest idea of living with that person as his wife. In this way a chief, in the course of his lifetime, might be married well on to fifty times; he would not, however, probably have more than two living with him at the same time. As the heads of families were on the look-out to have the _sons_ and _daughters_ of the chief married as often as they could also, it can be imagined that the main connecting links between the heads of families and their chief, and that which marked him out most prominently as a superior, was this marriage, or rather polygamy business.

The land in Samoa is owned alike by the chiefs and these heads of families. The land belonging to each family is well known, and the person who, for the time being, holds the t.i.tle of the family head, has the right to dispose of it. It is the same with the chiefs. There are certain tracts of bush or forest land which belong to them. The uncultivated bush is sometimes claimed by those who own the land on its borders. The lagoon also, as far as the reef, is considered the property of those off whose village it is situated. Although the power of selling land, and doing other things of importance affecting all the members of the family, is vested in the t.i.tled head of the family, yet the said responsible party dare not do anything without formally consulting all concerned. Were he to persist in attempting to do otherwise, they would take his t.i.tle from him, and give it to another.

The members of a family can thus take the t.i.tle from their head, and heads of families can unite and take the t.i.tle from their chief, and give it to his brother, or uncle, or some other member of the chief family, who, they think, will act more in accordance with their wishes.

The chief of the village and the heads of families formed the legislative body of the place, and the common court of appeal in all cases of difficulty. One of these heads of families was the sort of Prime Minister of the chief. It was his special business to call a meeting, and it was also his province to send notice to the other heads of families, on the arrival of a party of strangers, and to say what each was to provide towards entertaining hospitably the village guests. Having no written language, of course they had no written laws; still, as far back as we can trace, they had well understood laws for the prevention of theft, adultery, a.s.sault, and murder, together with many other minor things, such as disrespectful language to a chief, calling him a pig, for instance, rude behaviour to strangers, pulling down a fence, or maliciously cutting a fruit-tree.

Nor had they only the mere laws; the further back we go in their history, we find that their penalties were all the more severe. Death was the usual punishment for murder and adultery; and, as the injured party was at liberty to seek revenge on the brother, son, or any member of the family to which the guilty party belonged, these crimes were all the more dreaded and rare. In a case of murder, the culprit, and all belonging to him, fled to some other village of the district, or perhaps to another district; in either case it was a city of refuge. While they remained away, it was seldom any one dared to pursue them, and risk hostilities with the village which protected them. They might hear, however, that their houses had been burned, their plantations and land taken from them, and they themselves prohibited, by the united voice of the chief and heads of families, from ever again returning to the place. Fines of large quant.i.ties of food, which provided a feast for the entire village, were common; but there were frequently cases in which it was considered right to make the punishment fall exclusively on the culprit himself. For adultery, the eyes were sometimes taken out or the nose and ears _bitten_ off. I was called into a house one day to doctor the _nose_ of a young dame who had just suffered from the incisors of a jealous woman. A story is told of a husband and wife who made up their minds to end their jealousies by a separation. When all was ready, and the woman was about to leave the house with her share of the mat and other property, she said to the man: "Now, let us again salute noses and part in peace." The simpleton yielded, but instead of the friendly touch and _smell_, the vixen fastened on to the poor fellow's _gnomon_, and disfigured him for life.