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‘Guardians and Wards’ : (A study of the origins, causes, and the first two years of the Mau in Western Samoa.)

[untitled]

Pule ma Tumua, Ituau ma Alataua, Aiga-i-le-Tai, ma le Va'a-o-Fonoti

‘The opposition here is between magnificent human anarchy and the permanence of the unchanging sea’.

(Albert Camus, ‘The Minotaur’ or ‘The Stop in Oran’.)

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Western Samoa and its people were shaped by the whirl of centuries within the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. Scarcely 1090 square miles in size, a group of basalt rock and coral, 1 it held little for the papalagi, (Europeans). But they came. And from the missionaries to the New Zealanders, Samoa assumed an important role in world history; with the Great Powers nearly coming to war over it in the late nineteenth century. Samoa's historical ‘importance’ again caught the attention of the world, especially after 1926.

Strategically located, the Group runs in a broken chain, almost east to west, from several hundred miles around latitude 14°S. The climate is generally hot and wet, with very little variation in temperature. From April to November the climate is hot and dry. The ‘wet season’ extends from November to December.

All the islands, except Manono, are of the high volcanic type. Each island (Savaii, Upolu, Apolima and Manono) has a high backbone of hills, reaching up to 6000 feet in Savaii. Between the strandline and the foothills lie undulating belts of fertile alluvium. These belts provided the main areas for agriculture and settlement. Most of the islands were covered with tropical forests. From the foothills inland these forests were denser: festering growths of trees, lianas, ferns and parasites. Much of the inland country was of poor quality, and large areas of Savaii were valueless lava flows.

The dense vegetation and rugged terrain made internal communications very difficult, and isolated villages from one another. Travel had to be page 3 mainly by canoe. There were well-known trails over the ranges, through the passes and around the coast.

The sea and the nature of the soil, terrain, and climate confined settlement mainly to the shoreline. Settlement was most continuous in Upolu, especially the northwest. While in Savaii, the ring of coastal settlements was interrupted by lava fields. In the eighteen fifties, according to Kramer, there were 122 villages.2 By 1926 there were 233; the average population of a village being 210 persons. However, there were villages reaching 1000 inhabitants.3

The typical growth curve of the Samoan population in the nineteenth century was a high birthrate subject to heavy mortality and to intermittent scourges of famine, war and disease. Famines were of minor importance in the nineteenth century. The Group was subject to occasional hurricanes, which destroyed crops and livestock, hence causing a temporary shortage of food. The numbers killed in wars are impossible to gauge. In all probability the losses due to war were much less than those due to epidemics. There are no records of numbers lost in epidemics during the nineteenth century. However, descriptions suggest that some epidemics claimed large numbers.

In 1837, Wilkes estimated the population to number 47,000. According to an L.M.S. ‘census’ in 1845, it numbered 45,000. The New Zealand authorities, in 1917, claimed there were 35,404 people in the Group.4

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The bounty of the sea and the highly fertile alluvium belts and foothills provided an ample base for the economy. The sea abounded with fish. Within the lagoon - mullet, mackerel, sea-eels, octupi, turtles, shellfish and sea-urchins. From the open sea came bonito and shark. The land offered a harvest of taro, yams, bananas, breadfruit, coconuts, ta'amū, and arrowroot. All grown in unruly clearings spaced along the coastal areas and the hinterland.

The economy was one of plenty, involving an easy routine of labour. Yet there were times of famine caused by wars, natural disasters and epidemics.5

This picture of plenty has led some western writers to conclude that life in Samoa was one of relative ease, claiming that the Samoans were ‘fortunate individuals’.6 However, life in Samoa was not one of constant plenty and comfort. The people suffered from their own fears, superstitions and gods, from the plagues of periodic warfare and diseases, from their own forms of social and political injustice, from the inhumanity of man to man, from their own mistakes. There was (and is) no such adam as the ‘noble savage’.

There were three major divisions in the Samoan socio-political organisation.

The nu'u (villages) were self-sufficient units of economic life. Each village was made up of aiga (clans) presided over by the matai. The more page 5 important of these clans were linked, through title, to bigger clans in other villages and districts. The status and prestige of the various titles within a village were quite clearly defined. Consequently, there was little internal rivalry.

The villages were linked into sub-district or district associations. These associations were allied or grouped into combinations (itumalo) depending on marital and historical circumstances.

Village life was dominated by the matai. The village councils of matai conducted the affairs of the village, determined the activities of the untitled sections - the aumaga (men) and aualuma (women) - and the division of labour and land.

Life was one of pleasant stability, a cycle of cultivating the soil and fishing, broken by feasts, funerals, games, kava ceremonies, and malaga (village journeys to other villages.) The world of the villager ended within the reef.

On the other hand, Samoa, as a whole, was a picture of instability. Warfare and feuding took three forms. Firstly, there were struggles within clans for control of their larger elite titles. Secondly, there were struggles among clan and locality groups to enhance or increase their prestige and power. And lastly, there was a see-saw rivalry between the two power systems of Samalie toa and Satupua, which had crystallised into a struggle Tumua and Pule, and which often embroiled the whole country in civil war.

The object of the rivalry - between Tumua and Pule - was the acquisition of the four great political-ceremonial titles known as the Tafa'ifa (Tuia'ana, Tuiatua, Tamasoali'i and Gatoaitele).

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One group of alignments was capped by an orator leadership called Tumua, and involved the right to confer the Tuiatua and Tuia'ana titles. The second group, known as Pule, held the right to bestow the Tamasoali'i and Gatoaitele titles.

The Tumua Leo (‘voice’) was made up of fifteen ‘voices’ representative of the Satupua groupings (e.g. the A'ana and Atua Districts) and nine representative of the Samalietoa clan groups (e.g. Tuamasaga in Upolu).

Pule comprised the six ‘voices’ of the leading districts in Savaii, and was associated with the Samalietoa, hence with Tuamasaga in Upolu.

The rivalry, therefore, was between a A'ana-Atua alliance, and a Tuamasaga-Savaii-Aiga-ile-tai (Manono and Apolima) alliance. With the Samalietoa Family leading the latter, and the Satupua leading the former.

One of the Tamaaiga [the leading ‘sons’ of either the Satupua (Mata'afa, Tamasese, Tuimaleali'ifano in the late nineteenth century) or the Samalietoa (Malietoa)] attained the peak of the system if, by ‘malo’7 party dominance, he gained control of all the Tafa'ifa titles.

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The Socio-Political System with Tafa'ifa

The Socio-Political System with Tafa'ifa