8 The Historical Setting of Meads Research

In the prefaces she wrote from 1949 onward for successive editions of Coming of Age in Samoa, Mead argued, as we have seen, that the account she had given of Samoa in 1928 was „a precious permanent possession“ of mankind, „forever true because no truer picture could be made of that which was gone.“ And when in the early 1970s she encountered, from Samoan university students in the United States and elsewhere, radical criticism of her portrayal of Samoa, together with the demand that she should revise what she had written, she asserted that any such revision was impossible. She admonished these irate Samoan critics of Coming of Age in Samoa with the words: „It must remain, as all anthropological works must remain, exactly as it was written, true to what I saw in Samoa and what I was able to convey of what I saw, true to the state of our knowledge of human behavior as it was in the mid 1920s; true to our hopes and fears for the future of the world.“¹

This pretext that anthropological works cannot possibly be revised and have forever to remain exactly as they were written is manifestly without scientific justification. Even if Mead had been the first European to undertake the study of Samoan culture, which she certainly was not, there would still be the possibility of retrospective revision of her conclusions in the light of the findings of subsequent investigators. In fact, however, there is an immense corpus of detailed historical information on the Samoans dating from the year 1722; indeed, as Mead herself noted in 1958, „the literature on Samoa is one of the most complete and varied … available for any culture.“ This means that the propositions about the nature of Samoan culture contained in Mead's writings are fully open, as are the propositions of any other writer on Samoa, to an empirically based examination of their truth or falsity.²

Although the Navigators' Archipelago, as it was at first called, was discovered by Roggeveen as early as 1722, and then visited by de Bougainville (1768), La Pérouse (1787), Edwards (1791), Kotzebue (1824), and other voyagers, it was not until 1830, with the arrival of the pioneer missionaries John Williams and Charles Barff, that comprehensive and detailed information about the Samoans and their ways began to be recorded. During his second voyage to Samoa in 1832, Williams took aboard his schooner one Mr. Stevens, a surgeon, who had gone ashore from a whaler and spent some months living with pagan Samoans. From the reports of teachers from eastern Polynesia whom he had left in Savai'i in 1830, his own observations, and the recollections of Stevens, who accompanied him back to Rarotonga, Williams put together an account of the Samoans as they were during this period.³

This remarkable narrative was later supplemented by the observations of many other missionaries, whose letters, journals, and published works make up an enormously rich fund of information on Samoan culture and behavior. Particularly valuable are the writings of George Pratt, George Turner, and Thomas Powell, each of whom lived among the Samoans for several decades. Powell, after a visit to Ta'ü in 1853, took a special interest in the traditions and history of Manu'a. The observations of Williams, Barff, and the other missionaries of the early 1830s were notably augmented in 1839 by the wide-ranging investigations in Samoa of the United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes, one of whose associates was the pioneer ethnographer Horatio Hale, and later by Captain J. E. Erskine's account of his visit in 1849 in H.M.S. Havannah and by John Jackson's plain-spoken narrative of his forced sojourn in Manu'a in 1840. Then followed the writings of consular officials such as W. T. Pritchard, T. Trood, A. P. Maudslay, and W. B. Churchward; of the incomparable Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived in western Samoa from 1889 to 1894; and of erudite German scholars, notably O. Stuebel, E. Schultz, and Augustin Krämer, the first volume of whose monumental Die Samoa-Inseln appeared in 1902. And from 1900, when western Samoa became a protectorate of Germany and eastern Samoa a territory of the United States, there are official reports aplenty.⁴ The institutions and traditions of Samoa had thus been very extensively documented long before Mead first set foot on Ta'ü in 1925. Indeed, when George Brown's Melanesians and Polynesians (which contains a valuable account of Samoa based on Brown's observations from 1860 to l870) was published in 1910, a reviewer in the American Anthropologist remarked that it added little that was really new, so often had Samoa been described by navigators, missionaries, and later investigators, such as Krämer. It is in this context of copious observation and research from 1830 onward that Mead's investigations of 1925-1926 have to be assessed, in particular her supposition of 1969 (voiced after sustained criticism of her findings), that Manu'a in 1925 „might have represented a special variation on the Samoan pattern, a temporary felicitous relaxation,“ of the quarrels and rivalries, and the sensitivity to slight and insults that other observers had reported as characteristic of Samoan society both before and after the time of her research.⁵

Although Mead's investigations in 1925-1926 were confined to the islands of eastern Samoa, she fully recognized that these islands were part of the Samoan archipelago, which prior to Eu-

ropean contact was a „closed universe,“ whose inhabitants conceived of „the Samoan people as all members of one organization.“ The Samoan archipelago (see map) contains nine inhabited islands. Of these, Savai'i, Upolu, Apolima, and Manono make up Western Samoa, which after periods of German and then of New Zealand rule became an independent nation in 1962. The other islands, consisting of Tutuila and Aunu'u and of Manu'a, are in American Samoa, a territory of the United States. Manu'a has three islands, Ofu, Olosega, and Ta'u; the main settlement of Ta'u also goes by the name of Ta'u. As George Turner notes, the Samoans have but one dialect and have long been in free communication from island to island; in Bradd Shore's words, „culturally and linguistically, the entire Samoan archipelago reveals a remarkably unified identity and striking homogeneity.“⁶ Historically, then, all of the local polities of the Samoan archipelago have a common way of life, described by the people themselves as 'o le fa'aSamoa, a phrase meaning in the manner of the inhabitants of the Samoan archipelago.⁷

In 1930 Su'a, a chief from Savai'i who after fifteen years' residence in Tutuila had become a naturalized citizen of American Samoa, stated in evidence before the U.S. Congressional Investigation Commission on American Samoa (referring to Upolu and Savai'i as British Samoa): „All the Samoan people are of one race. Our customs, genealogies, legends and languages are the same. The chiefs and village maids (taupou) of American Samoa when they visit British Samoa are recognized as chiefs and taupous of certain villages in accordance with their genealogies. Their visitors from British Samoa are likewise recognized in the chief councils of Tutuila and Manu'a.“⁸ In what follows, therefore, as is warranted by their common cultural history, I shall make use of pertinent evidence from any of the Samoan islands—from Ta'u in the east to Savai'i in the west.

Margaret Mead was in Samoa from 31 August 1925 to early in June 1926, spending some three months in Tutuila and about six months in Manu'a. What is the evidence for her later supposition that at the time of her inquiries there might have been a temporary relaxation of quarrels and rivalries, and of sensitivity to slight and insults? This question can be readily answered: as the historical documents show, in American Samoa the 1920s were in fact a particularly turbulent period, with deep and widespread disaffection among the Samoans of both Tutuila and Manu'a. As Governor H. F. Bryan recorded in 1926, in April 1920 „a period of unrest“ began which had „a very disastrous effect on the material prosperity of the islands“ of American Samoa. This unrest stemmed from a movement which came to be known as the Mau, a Samoan term signifying to stand fast in opposition, and took the form of a demand for civil government. Its counterpart in Upolu and Savai'i was directed against the governing of those islands by New Zealand under the mandate of the League of Nations. After serious trouble in 1928, during which sailors and marines from two New Zealand cruisers arrested some 400 Samoans, the Mau of Western Samoa culminated tragically in Apia in 1929, in the fatal shooting by police of eleven Samoans, including the high chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi, who were participating in a procession of protest.⁹

On 14 April 1926, while Mead was still in Manu'a, an article appeared in The Nation that discussed „abuses and evils“ in American Samoa and drew attention to a letter that 344 Samoan chiefs had addressed to the President of the United States in 1921. This letter, which had been published in The Nation of 15 March 1922, mentioned „grievous wrongs“ against the Samoans committed by the naval government of American Samoa. In another letter of 1921, also published in The Nation, 971 Samoan signatories complained, among other things, that the chiefs and people of Tutuila and Manu'a were „forbidden to assemble to consider Samoan affairs and the welfare of the Samoan people.“ Also in 1921, seventeen chiefs and orators were imprisoned for „conspiring to kill the high chiefs who had signified their loyalty to the Governor.“¹⁰

The involvement of Manu'ans in this unrest became acute in July 1924, when three of their high-ranking talking chiefs, Taua-nu'u, Tulifua, and Ti'a, in open defiance of the government of American Samoa, formally conferred the title of Tui Manu'a on Christopher Taliutafa Young. The high chief Sotoa, who held the position of acting district governor, participated in the kava ceremony that marked the installation of the new Tui Manu'a. These events precipitated a major crisis. Some fifteen years previously, on the death of Tui Manu'a Eliasara in 1909, the then governor of American Samoa, Captain J. F. Parker, had proclaimed that from the date of the hoisting of the American flag in Manu'a (in 1904), the title of Tui Manu'a had been changed to district governor. This step was taken because, as J. A. C. Gray notes, „the Tui Manu'a was royal in nature and therefore inadmissible under the Constitution of the United States.“ In 1924, when the Manu'ans restored their sovereign chieftainship in direct defiance of this ruling, Captain E. S. Kel-log, who had been governor of American Samoa since 1923, at once dispatched the U.S.S. Ontario to Ta'u to summon the newly installed Tui Manu'a, together with Taua-nu'u, Tulifua, and Ti'a, to the naval station in Pago Pago. On 7 August 1924 they were arraigned before him. Their actions, he said, „smacked of conspiracy.“ Sotoa, who was held to be primarily at fault, was suspended from office, and the newly installed Tui Manu'a was detained in Tutuila. Taua-nu'u, Tulifua, and Ti'a remained wholly defiant, telling Governor Kellog that they were „dissatisfied to the death“ with his interference in the affairs of Manu'a. In Gray's judgment the deposed Tui Manu'a, Christopher Taliutafa Young, became the means by which the Mau of American Samoa „came of age and assumed something of the status of a political party.“¹¹

This then was the tense and troubled political situation at the time of Mead's brief sojourn in Manu'a and Tutuila. According to A. F. Judd, who as a member of a Bishop Museum expedition visited both Manu'a and Tutuila for six weeks early in 1926, when Mead was on Ta'a, the Mau was widespread at this time, and there were few Samoans who did not sympathize with it.¹²

Throughout 1927 and 1928 Mau leaders continued to confront the naval governor with demands for civil government and American citizenship. In response to these demands, a congressional investigation commission was finally created in 1929 and visited American Samoa in September and October 1930. The hearings of this commission, published in a volume of 510 pages

in 1931, provide a detailed chronicle of events in American Samoa during the 1920s, just as does the report of the Royal Commission Concerning the Administration of Western Samoa of 1927 of events in Upolu and Savai'i. The evidence presented to these two commissions refers specifically to events in the Samoan islands from the early 1920s onward, including the months of Mead's researches in Tutuila and Manu'a, and thus provides a conclusive empirical check on many of Mead's assertions, as for example her statement that in Samoa „no one suffers for his convictions.“ Indeed, in the light of the facts established by these two commissions, Mead's claim that her picture of Samoa had become forever true is at once revealed as nugatory.¹³

Felix Keesing, in his study of the history of cultural change in Samoa, concluded in 1934 that during the years from 1830 to 1879, when the Samoans were converted to Christianity and traders became established, a postcontact „equilibrium of culture“ was reached, which persisted virtually unaltered into the 1930s. Gray, in his history of conditions in Tutuila and Manu'a between the end of World War I and the American entry into World War II, asserted that during this period, despite the disturbances of the Mau in the 1920s, „the fa'aSamoa hung on tenaciously.“ There is thus no reason to suppose that Samoan society and behavior changed in any fundamental way during the fourteen years between 1926, the year of the completion of Mead's inquiries, and 1940, when I began my own observations of Samoan behavior. In the refutation that follows, in addition to making use of the rich historical sources that date from 1830 pi onward, I shall draw on the evidence of my own research in the 1940s, the years 1965 to 1968, and 1981.¹⁴

By way of introduction to my refutation of Mead's conclusions, I now turn to a brief conspectus of Samoan society, giving particular attention to the traditional system of rank, which is fundamental to the organization of Samoan society. Samoan society is exceedingly intricate and varied in the details of its structure, and this conspectus must necessarily omit many of the finer distinctions of Samoan traditional lore. Readers who wish further to acquaint themselves with the social history of

Samoa should consult the first volume of Augustin Kramer's Die Samoa-Inseln, in which he gives detailed information on the constitution, genealogies, and traditions of all the islands of the Samoan archipelago, or chapters 1 and 2 of R. P. Gilson's Samoa 1830 to 1900.¹⁵

Traditionally, the population of Samoa is organized into discrete local polities, known as nu'u, each with its own clearly demarcated territory, and each with its own fono, or governing council of chiefs. These settlements, which varied in size in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from several score to several hundred inhabitants, are dispersed along the palm-fringed coasts of all the islands of the archipelago, with each nu'u comprising a series of family homesteads grouped around a common malae, or ceremonial ground. Inland of each settlement are the swiddens in which taro and other crops are cultivated, and beyond these the rain forest, in which there were once stone-walled forts for use in time of war. The communities of these settlements are composed of a number of interrelated 'aiga, or localized extended families. The members of each 'aiga reside in a cluster of houses, using the same earth oven in the preparation of their food. The descent system is optative with an emphasis on agnation. Each of these families (which averaged in 1943, in the village of Sa'anapu on the south coast of Upolu, some nineteen members) lives and works under the direct authority of the individual (almost always male) whose succession to its chiefly title has been both approved by its members and ratified by the village fono, in the hierarchy of which he takes his appointed place as the titled representative of his 'aiga.¹⁶

Each village polity has its own fa'avae, of constitution, in which the relative rank of the chiefly titles of its constituent families are laid down in strict hierarchical order. Sanctioning this hierarchy are the all-important genealogies, through which chiefly families trace their descent from illustrious forebears, whose primal rank had almost always been vindicated by victories in war. As Samuel Ella has recorded, in ancient Samoa the genealogy of chiefs, especially of high chiefs, was preserved with great care, those who had been charged with its custody being very jealous of their responsibility. Indeed, so crucial is genealogy to the traditional hierarchies of Samoan communities and districts that the unauthorized recitation of genealogies is strictly forbidden, out of a fear that the airing of issues of relative rank will lead to altercation and bloodshed.¹⁷

Instead, the genealogically sanctioned hierarchy of each local community and district and, indeed, the whole of Samoa, is expressed in a set of traditional phrases, or fa'alupega. These fa'alupega, which Dr. Peter Buck, when in American Samoa in 1927, likened to Burke's Peerage, extend over the whole of the rank hierarchy and operate at all levels of segmentation within this structure, are ceremonially intoned at all fono and other important gatherings in formal recognition of the relative rank of those participating.¹⁸ Now as in the past, when a chief enters a fono all activity is suspended until he takes up his appointed place, at which all of the other chiefs present intone his fa'alupega. The newcomer then recites, in order of precedence, the fa'alupega of all those present. This elaborate procedure follows the arrival of each chief until the whole fono is assembled, and is gone through again immediately prior to its dispersal. Further, all speeches made at a fono begin and end, and are often punctuated with, the conventional declamation of fa'alupega.

A fa'alupega, whether it refers to a local polity or district or the whole of Samoa, is thus an institution of quite fundamental importance, for, with the formal reiteration of the relative rank of titles on every significant social occasion, a chiefly hierarchy becomes so firmly established as to make it exceedingly difficult to effect any fundamental change in its order of precedence, except, as happened in ancient Samoa, by force of arms.

Furthermore, as Robert Louis Stevenson has described, in Samoa „terms of ceremony fly thick as oaths on board a ship,“ so that even commoners „my lord each other when they meet— and the urchins as they play marbles.“ This elaborate courtliness, as Stevenson calls it, has made the Samoans, in George Pratt's words, „the greatest observers of etiquette in Polynesia, if not in the world.“ Because of the rigors of their rank system, the Samoans place a particular emphasis on the precise practice of the verbal niceties that go with precedence, and over the centuries they have evolved a distinctive respect language with specific vocabularies for addressing and referring to those of chiefly rank. In pagan Samoa, as John Fraser notes, the rules of precedence and the ceremonious deference to authority among chiefs were identical with those observed by and in relation to the gods. Thus, in the myths of the Samoans, the gods are called chiefs, and „when they speak, they themselves use, and are addressed in, chiefs' language.“¹⁹

This polite language, as G. B. Milner has suggested, „probably grew out of the elaborate system of social intercourse adopted against the 'sin' and in fact the hazard of insulting or lowering the 'dignity' of a chief or guest in any way,“ and in practice the respect language acts as „a kind of verbal lubricant“ and is „a most effective device for the purpose of avoiding clashes, forestalling quarrels, and soothing the vexation of wounded pride and imagined or genuine grievances.“²⁰

However, while this system of punctilious social intercourse operates effectively most of the time, it does on occasion fail to prevent the tensions generated by the Samoan rank system from breaking out into violent conflict. Thus, in the words of George Brown, while the Samoans are arguably „the most polite people in the world“ in their formal language and manners, they are equally „a people quick to resent an insult or injury and quite ready to fight with their neighbors“ for what non-Samoans would consider to be the most trivial of causes.²¹

With rank goes the right to exercise power (pule), to assert priority of access to scarce resources,²² and to make and enforce decisions. Samoa is thus a highly authoritarian society, based principally on socially inherited rank, with those in subordinate positions being required to listen to and obey the instructions of those who have pule over them.

Chiefly titles, which vary considerably in rank, belong to one or the other of two quite distinct categories: ali'i, or titular chiefs, and tulafale, or talking chiefs (or orators, as they are also called in the anthropological literature). The general term for any chief, whether titular or talking, is matai.

The ali'i, in contradistinction to the tulafale, is, in J. W. Davidson's words, „the ultimate repository of political power.“ The ali'i, furthermore, having in Samoan tradition a personal sanctity, is accorded special deference and respect; those of the highest rank were known in former times as sacred chiefs. In the presence of these sacred chiefs, as Pratt observed in 1842, „no inferior dare eat,“ and on ceremonial occasions they were carried from place to place on a litter preceded by a talking chief blowing on a conch shell. John Williams, in July 1830, witnessed the chief Fauea (himself of considerable rank) salute his sacred chief, Malietoa Vai-inu-po, to whom he was related, with „the greatest possible respect, bowing sufficiently low to kiss his feet and making his child even kiss the soles of his feet.“²³

The expressions used to describe a chief of high rank dilate upon size, height, and brilliance. Such a chief is likened, for example, to a lofty mountain or a star, or is compared to a huge banyan tree towering over the rest of the forest. The power of sacred chiefs, as Pratt records, was believed to be of divine origin, and the most august of them, as the sacrosanct sovereigns of their ancient realms, were given the transcendent title of Tui.²⁴

The sanctity that attached to these sacred chiefs is also possessed in some degree by titular chiefs of lesser rank. For example, a titular chief has the right to be addressed in honorific language; the right to a ceremonially named house site, the height of the base of which is a measure of his rank; and the right to a kava cup title, which is used whenever the place of his chiefly title in the hierarchy of his polity is given formal recognition in a kava ceremony. He may also possess the right to confer the taupou title of his family on one of his nubile and virginal daughters and its coveted manaia title on one of his sons, who then becomes his heir apparent. Further, an ali'i of paramount rank in his local polity enjoys, together with his taupou and manaia, the right to wear on ceremonial occasions a tuiga, an elegantly ornamented headdress of human hair bleached to a golden hue and symbolic of the sun. This right is a mark of distinction which, as Judge Marsack notes, is very jealously guarded, with any unsanctioned attempt to assume it being met with „speedy and violent objection.“ Finally, a high-ranking ali'i is entitled to have performed on his death a prolonged and elaborate series of funeral rites.²⁵

In contradistinction to the ali'i is the tulafale, or talking chief, who in Davidson's words performs for the chief a variety of duties, which it is „contrary to propriety for the chief to perform for himself.“ A talking chief is thus subservient to the titular chief to whom he is attached, deriving such rank as his own tulafale name possesses from the fact of his association with his ali'i. Judge Schultz, who was for many years president of the Land and Titles Commission under the German regime in Western Samoa, was of the view that in the course of history tulafale had sprung from the servants or dependents of the ali'i they served. The families of the titular chiefs, in Schultz's view, had in former times, through the warlike character of their members, obtained supremacy, and so formed a titled aristocracy, the members of which also laid claim to supernatural descent. In this process others in the population „became their subjects, and the word tulafale took the meaning of an inherited office.“²⁶

The relationship in which tulafale stand to ali'i is a social linkage in which the ali'i, although superordinate, very much depends on the support of the tulafale. This interdependence is well expressed in the use of the word tula as the term of respect for a talking chief attached to a high-ranking titular chief. A tula, as Schultz notes, is a stick bent at a slight angle, on which in ancient Samoa a tamed and prized pigeon was carried, and is thus a telling metaphor for the way in which a talking chief acts as the prop or support of his illustrious ali'i. It is the responsibility of talking chiefs to safeguard and enhance the dignity of their ali'i by carrying out a wide range of duties. In particular, talking chiefs are responsible for the sharing out of food and property, and, as the agents of their ali'i, for the making of speeches in both political and ceremonial settings. The marks of authority of the tulafale are a staff and a switch of sennit, and he is expected to attend to the policing of regulations and the like drawn up by ali'i. In some polities, moreover, through the vicissitudes of history talking chiefs have come to occupy positions of exceptional power. For example, Sala'ilua, in Savai'i, as Shore reports, is „striking in the pre-eminent position enjoyed by certain of its orators, a position eclipsing that normally enjoyed by ali'i in a village.“²⁷

In addition to being regularly reiterated in its fa'alupega, the rank hierarchy of a village is also expressed in the seating plan of its fono (see figure 1) and in its accompanying kava ceremony. During a fono, the traditional venue for which is an elegant round house, the participants sit cross-legged at the wall posts that mark its perimeter, in a rigidly prescribed seating order that clearly demarcates the titular from the talking chiefs and also designates the rank order within each of these categories. The wall posts of the two lateral sections of a round house, known as tola, are reserved for titular chiefs, while those of the itu, the front and back of the house, are kept for talking chiefs. Within each of these sections the central post is of principal importance, and the posts on either side of this central position decrease in importance in proportion to their distance from it. Again, within each of the tala that are the prerogative of titular chiefs, the wall posts extending to the front of the house take precedence over the equivalent posts in the rear section. When the paramount chief of a village takes up his position at the central post of one of the tala, the post in the opposite tala is left vacant in recognition of his being without peer within the local rank order.²⁸ Within the itu, the front is all important, the back section being used for the preparation of kava, the division of food, and other tasks that fall to low-ranking talking chiefs.

A third conventional summation of the rank structure of a Samoan polity is the kava ceremony, in which a drink prepared from the pulverized root of Piper methysticum is ritually partaken of during a fono. A formal kava ceremony is a sacrosanct occasion. As it has primarily to do with rank, which is the most grave and delicate of issues, the demeanor of the participants is serious. At kava ceremonies today, libations are poured to Jehovah. In pagan times they were offered to Tagaloa, and there are numerous myths associating kava with the gods of pagan Samoa, for whom it was a hallowed fluid. For example, it is said

that when the young son of a man named Pava fell into a kava bowl, desecrating it, Tagaloa became so enraged that he cut the boy in two with the stem of a palm frond. (After having thus struck fear into Pava's heart over his failure to restrain his son during a kava ceremony, Tagaloa mercifully restored the child to life.)²⁹

A kava ceremony provides a great variety of ways in which formal recognition is given to rank. The principal of these is the order of distribution. The first cup to be announced is of prime distinction and next to this the last cup. The remaining cups progressively decrease in importance from the second to the penultimate. The order of precedence in a kava ceremony is thus another ritualized expression, like the fa'alupega, of the rank hierarchy of a local community or district.³⁰ A sharp distinction is also made in every kava ceremony between titular and talking chiefs. A titular chief possesses in his own right a kava cup title which is used whenever his kava is announced. For example, the kava cup title of 'Anapu, the paramount chief of Sa'anapu, is made up of these vaunting words: „The honor conferred by Malie and Vaito'elau [two centers of high importance in the rank order of western Samoa], fetch the war club that quickly springs to life.“ Again, a titular chief's kava cup is always prefaced by the honorific phrase Lau ipu, meaning, „Your cup.“ In contrast, a talking chief has no kava cup title, and his name is prefaced by the commonplace words Lau 'ava, meaning „Your kava.“ Further major distinctions are expressed in the modes of presenting kava to chiefs. In the case of a titular chief the kava cup (of highly polished coconut shell) is presented with a graceful sweep of the arm that culminates with the inner surface of the forearm and hand facing toward the recipient; in the case of a talking chief kava is offered with no sign of display and with the back of the hand thrust foward.

The fono, then, in its structure and conventions, is a prime expression of the ethos of Samoan society as well as of the particular characteristics of a village or district, and in its fa'alupega, seating order, and kava ceremony it provides a demonstration that rank, as Lowell Holmes has remarked, constitutes „the focal point of Samoan culture,“ in comparison with which all other aspects of Samoan life, including even religion, are of secondary importance.³¹

With the conversion of the Samoans to Christianity the sanctity that once surrounded sacred chiefs as the earthly descendants of Polynesian gods was gradually transferred to chiefs in general as the elect of Jehovah. For example, during the constitutional convention of Western Samoa in 1955, Afa-masaga, a high-ranking titular chief of A'ana, declared that chieftainship was „a birthright from God,“ and it has long been averred by Christian chiefs that the institution of chieftainship was founded by God. This doctrine, furthermore, is given a scriptural sanction. In Proverbs 8:16, Jehovah is reported as proclaiming: „By me princes rule and nobles govern the earth.“ On the basis of this and other texts in the Bible, it is widely maintained that the Samoan chief is „a god of this world.“

The Samoans, in addition to being preoccupied with rank, are deeply steeped in the Christian religion. However, the Christian pastor or priest of a village community is held to be in a special relationship with the village as a local polity, and is excluded from participation in the deliberations of its fono. This means that a local polity is held to be under the direct authority of God, or the Atua—atua being the term that was once applied to the high god of pagan Samoa, Tagaloa. Samoan chiefs, as Christians, think of their society as a hierarchy with Jehovah, instead of Tagaloa, at its apex. Today, in fonos throughout Samoa, libations of kava are poured to Jehovah, the all-powerful God who, as the source of the Samoan system of chiefly government, is said to be unrelenting in the punishment of those who disobey the dictates of its divinely constituted authority.

In every local polity the rank order of its fono is repeated in a series of interrelated social groups involving all of the adult members of the village (with the exception of the family of the pastor). All of these groups are under the direct authority of the fono, which they are obligated to support and serve. Traditionally these groups comprise the 'aumaga, consisting of untitled men, the aualuma, consisting of women who are resident members, by birth or adoption, of local families, and groups consisting of the wives of titular and talking chiefs and the wives of untitled men. Each of these groups when it meets follows the basic structure of the fa'alupega, the seating plan, and the kava ceremony of the fono of chiefs to which it is subservient. The principle of rank thus applies to the members of all these groups, as also to all of the children of the community. Any individual's rank is that of the position of the title of the family to which he or she belongs in the community's constitution.

It is also said by chiefs that the relationship between themselves and untitled individuals is set apart, and that a chief (whether titular or talking) is entitled to the respectful obedience of all those over whom he has authority. A child is first taught to obey all those within his family, with one of the main instruments of instruction being physical punishment. He is expected to remain obedient to those in authority over him whatever his age. Central to Samoan society, then, are the closely related principles of the right of those of superordinate rank to exercise authority over those who are below them in the social order, and of the obligation of those in positions of subordination to obey the dictates they receive from above. The Samoans are thus a proud, punctilious, and complex, God-fearing people, whose orators delight in extolling the beauty of mornings that dawn with the sanctity and dignity of their ancient polities serenely intact. Yet, as we shall see, such are the rigors of the Samoan rank system and so intense is the emotional ambivalence generated by omnipresent authority that this goal is all too frequently not attained; instead, the morning dawns in fearful trembling and shaking, for as anyone who has grown up within a Samoan polity well knows, „the Samoan way is difficult indeed.“³²

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