Pages 161 to 163.
During six months I saw six girls leave the pastor’s establishment
for several reasons: Tasi, because her mother was ill and she, that
rare phenomenon, the eldest in a biological household, was needed at
home; Tua, because she had come out lowest in the missionaries’ annual
examination which her mother attributed to favouritism on the part
of the pastor; Luna, because her stepmother, whom she disliked, left
her father and thus made her home more attractive and because under
the influence of a promiscuous older cousin she began to tire of the
society of younger girls and take an interest in love affairs; Lita,
because her father ordered her home, because with the permission of the
pastor, but without consulting her family, she went off for a three
weeks’ visit in another island. Going home for Lita involved residence
in the far end of the other village, necessitating a complete change of
friends. The novelty of the new group and new interests kept her from
in any way chafing at the change. Sala, a stupid idle girl, had eloped
from the household of the pastor.
APPENDIX II
METHODOLOGY OF THIS STUDY
It is impossible to present a single and unified picture of the
adolescent girl in Samoa and at the same time to answer most
satisfactorily the various kinds of questions which such a study will
be expected to answer. For the ethnologist in search of data upon the
usages and rites connected with adolescence it is necessary to include
descriptions of customs which have fallen into partial decay under
the impact of western propaganda and foreign example. Traditional
observances and attitudes are also important in the study of the
adolescent girl in present-day Samoa because they still form a large
part of the thought pattern of her parents, even if they are no longer
given concrete expression in the girl’s cultural life. But this double
necessity of describing not only the present environment and the girl’s
reaction to it, but also of interpolating occasionally some description
of the more rigid cultural milieu of her mother’s girlhood, mars to
some extent the unity of the study.
The detailed observations were all made upon a group of girls living
in three practically contiguous villages on one coast of the island of
Taū. The data upon the ceremonial usages surrounding birth, adolescence
and marriage were gathered from all of the seven villages in the Manu’a
Archipelago.
The method of approach is based upon the assumption that a detailed
intensive investigation will be of more value than a more diffused and
general study based upon a less accurate knowledge of a greater number
of individuals. Dr. Van Waters’ study of _The Adolescent Girl Among
Primitive Peoples_ has exhausted the possibilities of an investigation
based upon the merely external observations of the ethnologist who
is giving a standardised description of a primitive culture. We have
a huge mass of general descriptive material without the detailed
observations and the individual cases in the light of which it would be
possible to interpret it.
The writer therefore chose to work in one small locality, in a group
numbering only six hundred people, and spend six months accumulating
an intimate and detailed knowledge of all the adolescent girls in this
community. As there were only sixty-eight girls between the ages of
nine and twenty, quantitative statements are practically valueless for
obvious reasons: the probable error of the group is too large; the
age classes are too small, etc. The only point at which quantitative
statements can have any relevance is in regard to the variability
within the group, as the smaller the variability within the sample, the
greater the general validity of the results.
Furthermore, the type of data which we needed is not of the sort which
lends itself readily to quantitative treatment. The reaction of the
girl to her stepmother, to relatives acting as foster parents, to her
younger sister, or to her older brother,—these are incommensurable in
quantitative terms. As the physician and the psychiatrist have found it
necessary to describe each case separately and to use their cases as
illumination of a thesis rather than as irrefutable proof such as it
is possible to adduce in the physical sciences, so the student of the
more intangible and psychological aspects of human behaviour is forced
to illuminate rather than demonstrate a thesis. The composition of the
background against which the girl acts can be described in accurate and
general terms, but her reactions are a function of her own personality
and cannot be described without reference to it. The generalisations
are based upon a careful and detailed observation of a small group of
subjects. These results will be illuminated and illustrated by case
histories.
The conclusions are also all subject to the limitation of the personal
equation. They are the judgments of one individual upon a mass of
data, many of the most significant aspects of which can, by their
very nature, be known only to herself. This was inevitable and it can
only be claimed in extenuation that as the personal equation was held
absolutely constant, the different parts of the data are strictly
commensurable. The judgment on the reaction of Lola to her uncle and of
Sona to her cousin are made on exactly the same basis.
Another methodological device which possibly needs explanation is the
substitution of a cross sectional study for a linear one. Twenty-eight
children who as yet showed no signs of puberty, fourteen children
who would probably mature within the next year or year and a half,
and twenty-five girls who had passed puberty within the last four
years but were not yet classed by the community as adults, were
studied in detail. Less intensive observations were also made upon
the very little children and the young married women. This method of
taking cross sections, samples of individuals at different periods of
physical development, and arguing that a group in an earlier stage
will later show the characteristics which appear in another group at
a later stage, is, of course, inferior to a linear study in which the
same group is under observation for a number of years. A very large
number of cases has usually been the only acceptable defence of such a
procedure. The number of cases included in this investigation, while
very small in comparison with the numbers mustered by any student
of American children, is nevertheless a fair-sized sample in terms
of the very small population of Samoa (a rough eight thousand in
all four islands of American Samoa) and because the only selection
was geographical. It may further be argued that the almost drastic
character of the conclusions, the exceedingly few exceptions which
need to be made, further validate the size of the sample. The adoption
of the cross section method was, of course, a matter of expediency, but
the results when carefully derived from a fair sample, may be fairly
compared with the results obtained by using the linear method, when the
same subjects are under observation over a period of years. This is
true when the conclusions to be drawn are general and not individual.
For the purposes of psychological theory, it is sufficient to know
that children in a certain society walk, on the average, at twelve
months, and talk, on the average, at fifteen months. For the purposes
of the diagnostician, it is necessary to know that John walked at
eighteen months and did not talk until twenty months. So, for general
theoretical purposes, it is enough to state that little girls just past
puberty develop a shyness and lack of self-possession in the presence
of boys, but if we are to understand the delinquency of Mala, it is
necessary to know that she prefers the company of boys to that of girls
and has done so for several years.
PARTICULAR METHODS USED
The description of the cultural background was obtained in orthodox
fashion, first through interviews with carefully chosen informants,
followed by checking up their statements with other informants and
by the use of many examples and test cases. With a few unimportant
exceptions this material was obtained in the Samoan language and not
through the medium of interpreters. All of the work with individuals
was done in the native language, as there were no young people on the
island who spoke English.
Although a knowledge of the entire culture was essential for the
accurate evaluation of any particular individual’s behaviour, a
detailed description will be given only of those aspects of the culture
which are immediately relevant to the problem of the adolescent girl.
For example, if I observe Pele refuse point blank to carry a message
to the house of a relative, it is important to know whether she is
actuated by stubbornness, dislike of the relative, fear of the dark,
or fear of the ghost which lives near by and has a habit of jumping
on people’s backs. But to the reader a detailed exposition of the
names and habits of all the local ghost population would be of little
assistance in the appreciation of the main problem. So all descriptions
of the culture which are not immediately relevant are omitted from the
discussion but were not omitted from the original investigation. Their
irrelevancy has, therefore, been definitely ascertained.
The knowledge of the general cultural pattern was supplemented by a
detailed study of the social structure of the three villages under
consideration. Each household was analysed from the standpoint of
rank, wealth, location, contiguity to other households, relationship
to other households, and the age, sex, relationship, marital status,
number of children, former residence, etc., of each individual in the
household. This material furnished a general descriptive basis for a
further and more careful analysis of the households of the subjects,
and also provided a check on the origin of feuds or alliances between
individuals, the use of relationship terms, etc. Each child was thus
studied against a background which was known in detail.
A further mass of detailed information was obtained about the subjects:
approximate age (actual age can never be determined in Samoa), order
of birth, numbers of brothers and sisters, who were older and younger
than the subject, number of marriages of each parent, patrilocal and
matrilocal residence, years spent in the pastor’s school and in the
government school and achievement there, whether the child had ever
been out of the village or off the island, sex experience, etc. The
children were also given a makeshift intelligence test, colour-naming,
rote memory, opposites, substitution, ball and field, and picture
interpretation. These tests were all given in Samoan; standardisation
was, of course, impossible and ages were known only relatively; they
were mainly useful in assisting me in placing the child within her
group, and have no value for comparative purposes. The results of
the tests did indicate, however, a very low variability within the
group. The tests were supplemented by a questionnaire which was not
administered formally but filled in by random questioning from time to
time. This questionnaire gave a measure of their industrial knowledge,
the extent to which they participated in the lore of the community,
of the degree to which they had absorbed European teaching in matters
like telling time, reading the calendar, and also of the extent to
which they had participated in or witnessed scenes of death, birth,
miscarriage, etc.
But this quantitative data represents the barest skeleton of the
material which was gathered through months of observation of the
individuals and of groups, alone, in their households, and at play.
From these observations, the bulk of the conclusions are drawn
concerning the attitudes of the children towards their families and
towards each other, their religious interests or the lack of them, and
the details of their sex lives. This information cannot be reduced to
tables or to statistical statements. Naturally in many cases it was
not as full as in others. In some cases it was necessary to pursue a
more extensive enquiry in order to understand some baffling aspect
of the child’s behaviour. In all cases the investigation was pursued
until I felt that I understood the girl’s motivation and the degree to
which her family group and affiliation in her age group explained her
attitudes.
The existence of the pastor’s boarding-school for girls past puberty
provided me with a rough control group. These girls were so severely
watched that heterosexual activities were impossible; they were
grouped together with other girls of the same age regardless of
relationship; they lived a more ordered and regular life than the girls
who remained in their households. The ways in which they differed from
other girls of the same age and more resembled European girls of the
same age follow with surprising accuracy the lines suggested by the
specific differences in environment. However, as they lived part of the
time at home, the environmental break was not complete and their value
as a control group is strictly limited.
APPENDIX III
SAMOAN CIVILISATION AS IT IS TO-DAY
The scene of this study was the little island of Taū. Along one coast
of the island, which rises precipitately to a mountain peak in the
centre, cluster three little villages, Lumā and Siufaga, side by side,
and Faleasao, half a mile away. On the other end of the island is the
isolated village of Fitiuta, separated from the other three villages by
a long and arduous trail. Many of the people from the other villages
have never been to Fitiuta, eight miles away. Twelve miles across
the open sea are the two islands of Ofu and Olesega, which with Taū,
make up the Manu’a Archipelago, the most primitive part of Samoa.
Journeys in slender outrigger canoes from one of these three little
islands to another are frequent, and the inhabitants of Manu’a think of
themselves as a unit as over against the inhabitants of Tutuila, the
large island where the Naval Station is situated. The three islands
have a population of a little over two thousand people, with constant
visiting, inter-marrying, adoption going on between the seven villages
of the Archipelago.
The natives still live in their beehive-shaped houses with floors of
coral rubble, no walls except perishable woven blinds which are lowered
in bad weather, and a roof of sugar-cane thatch over which it is
necessary to bind palm branches in every storm. They have substituted
cotton cloth for their laboriously manufactured bark cloth for use
as everyday clothing, native costume being reserved for ceremonial
occasions. But the men content themselves with a wide cotton loin
cloth, the _lavalava_, fastened at the waist with a dexterous twist
of the material. This costume permits a little of the tattooing which
covers their bodies from knee to the small of the back, to appear above
and below the folds of the _lavalava_. Tattooing has been taboo on
Manu’a for two generations, so only a part of the population have made
the necessary journey to another island in search of a tattooer. Women
wear a longer _lavalava_ and a short cotton dress falling to their
knees. Both sexes go barefoot and hats are worn only to Church, on
which occasions the men don white shirts and white coats, ingeniously
tailored by the native women in imitation of Palm Beach coats which
have fallen into their hands. The women’s tattooing is much sparser
than the men’s, a mere matter of dots and crosses on arms, hands, and
thighs. Garlands of flowers, flowers in the hair, and flowers twisted
about the ankles, serve to relieve the drabness of the faded cotton
clothing, and on gala days, beautifully patterned bark cloth, fine
mats, gaily bordered with red parrot feathers, headdresses of human
hair decorated with plumes and feathers, recall the more picturesque
attire of pre-Christian days.
Sewing-machines have been in use for many years, although the natives
are still dependent upon some deft-handed sailor for repairs. Scissors
have also been added to the household equipment, but wherever possible
a Samoan woman still uses her teeth or a piece of bamboo. At the
Missionary boarding-schools a few of the women have learned to crochet
and embroider, using their skill particularly to ornament the plump,
hard pillows which are rapidly displacing the little bamboo head rests.
Sheets of white cotton have taken the place of sheets of firmly woven
mats or of bark cloth. Mosquito nets of cotton netting make a native
house much more endurable than must have been the case when bark cloth
tents were the only defence against insects. The netting is suspended
at night from stout cords hung across the house, and the edges weighted
down with stones, so that prowling dogs, pigs, and chickens wander
through the house at will without disturbing the sleepers.
Agate buckets share with hollowed cocoanut shells the work of bringing
water from the springs and from the sea, and a few china cups and
glasses co-operate with the cocoanut drinking cups. Many households
have an iron cook pot in which they can boil liquids in preference
to the older method of dropping red hot stones into a wooden vessel
containing the liquid to be heated. Kerosene lamps and lanterns are
used extensively; the old candle-nut clusters and cocoanut oil lamps
being reinstated only in times of great scarcity when they cannot
afford to purchase kerosene. Tobacco is a much-prized luxury; the
Samoans have learned to grow it, but imported varieties are very much
preferred to their own.
Outside the household the changes wrought by the introduction of
European articles are very slight. The native uses an iron knife to cut
his copra and an iron adze blade in place of the old stone one. But he
still binds the rafters of his house together with cinet and sews the
parts of his fishing canoes together. The building of large canoes has
been abandoned. Only small canoes for fishing are built now, and for
hauling supplies over the reef the natives build keeled rowboats. Only
short voyages are made in small canoes and rowboats, and the natives
wait for the coming of the Naval ship to do their travelling. The
government buys the copra and with the money so obtained the Samoans
buy cloth, thread, kerosene, soap, matches, knives, belts, and tobacco,
pay their taxes (levied on every man over a certain height as age is an
indeterminate matter), and support the church.
And yet, while the Samoans use these products of a more complex
civilisation, they are not dependent upon them. With the exception of
making and using stone tools, it is probably safe to say that none of
the native arts have been lost. The women all make bark cloth and weave
fine mats. Parturition still takes place on a piece of bark cloth,
the umbilical cord is cut with a piece of bamboo, and the new baby is
wrapped in a specially prepared piece of white bark cloth. If soap
cannot be obtained, the wild orange provides a frothy substitute. The
men still manufacture their own nets, make their own hooks, weave their
own eel traps. And although they use matches when they can get them,
they have not lost the art of converting a carrying stick into a fire
plow at a moment’s notice.
Perhaps most important of all is the fact that they still depend
entirely upon their own foods, planted with a sharpened pole in their
own plantations. Breadfruit, bananas, taro, yams, and cocoanuts form a
substantial and monotonous accompaniment for the fish, shell fish, land
crabs, and occasional pigs and chickens. The food is carried down to
the village in baskets, freshly woven from palm leaves. The cocoanuts
are grated on the end of a wooden “horse,” pointed with shell or iron;
the breadfruit and taro are supported on a short stake, tufted with
cocoanut husk, and the rind is grated off with a piece of cocoanut
shell. The green bananas are skinned with a bamboo knife. The whole
amount of food for a family of fifteen or twenty for two or three days
is cooked at once in a large circular pit of stones. These are first
heated to white heat; the ashes are then raked away; the food placed on
the stones and the oven covered with green leaves, under which the food
is baked thoroughly. Cooking over, the food is stored in baskets which
are hung up inside the main house. It is served on palm leaf platters,
garnished with a fresh banana leaf. Fingers are the only knives and
forks, and a wooden finger bowl is passed ceremoniously about at the
end of the meal.
Furniture, with the exception of a few chests and cupboards, has not
invaded the house. All life goes on on the floor. Speaking on one’s
feet within the house is still an unforgivable breach of etiquette,
and the visitor must learn to sit cross-legged for hours without
murmuring.
The Samoans have been Christian for almost a hundred years. With the
exception of a small number of Catholics and Mormons, all the natives
of American Samoa are adherents of the London Missionary Society,
known in Samoa as the “Church of Tahiti,” from its local origin. The
Congregationalist missionaries have been exceedingly successful in
adapting the stern doctrine and sterner ethics of a British Protestant
sect to the widely divergent attitudes of a group of South Sea
islanders. In the Missionary boarding-schools they have trained many
boys as native pastors and as missionaries for other islands, and many
girls to be the pastors’ wives. The pastor’s house is the educational
as well as the religious centre of the village. In the pastor’s school
the children learn to read and write their own language, to which the
early missionaries adapted our script, to do simple sums and sing
hymns. The missionaries have been opposed to teaching the natives
English, or in any way weaning them away from such of the simplicity
of their primitive existence as they have not accounted harmful.
Accordingly, although the elders of the church preach excellent sermons
and in many cases have an extensive knowledge of the Bible (which has
been translated into Samoan), although they keep accounts, and transact
lengthy business affairs, they speak no English, or only very little of
it. On Taū there were never more than half a dozen individuals at one
time who had any knowledge of English.
The Naval Government has adopted the most admirable policy of
benevolent non-interference in native affairs. It establishes
dispensaries and conducts a hospital where native nurses are trained.
These nurses are sent out into the villages where they have surprising
success in the administration of the very simple remedies at their
command, castor oil, iodine, argyrol, alcohol rubs, etc. Through
periodic administrations of salvarsan the more conspicuous symptoms of
yaws are rapidly disappearing. And the natives are learning to come to
the dispensaries for medicine rather than aggravate conjunctivitis to
blindness by applying irritating leaf poultices to the inflamed eyes.
Reservoirs have been constructed in most of the villages, providing an
unpolluted water supply at a central fountain where all the washing
and bathing is done. Copra sheds in each village store the copra
until the government ship comes to fetch it. Work on copra sheds,
on village boats used in hauling the copra over the reef, on roads
between villages, on the repairs of the water system, is carried
through by a levy upon the village as a whole, conforming perfectly to
the native pattern of communal work. The government operates through
appointed district governors and county chiefs, and elected “mayors”
in each village. The administrations of these officials are peaceful
and effective in proportion to the importance of their rank in the
native social organisation. Each village also has two policemen who act
as town criers, couriers on government inspections, and carriers of
the nurses’ equipment from village to village. There are also county
judges. A main court is presided over by an American civil judge and
a native judge. The penal code is a random combination of government
edicts, remarkable for their tolerance of native custom. When no
pronouncement on a point of law is found in this code, the laws of the
state of California, liberally interpreted and revised, are used to
provide a legalistic basis for the court’s decision. These courts have
taken over the settlement of disputes concerning important titles, and
property rights; and the chief causes of litigation in the “courthouse”
at Pago Pago are the same which agitated the native _fonos_ some
hundred years ago.
Schools are now maintained in many villages, where the children,
seated cross-legged on the floor of a large native house, learn the
haziest of English from boys whose knowledge of the language is little
more extensive than theirs. They also learn part singing, at which they
are extraordinarily adept, and to play cricket and many other games.
The schools are useful in instilling elementary ideas of hygiene, and
in breaking down the barriers between age and sex groups and narrow
residential units. From the pupils in the outlying schools the most
promising are selected to become nurses, teachers, and candidates for
the native marine corps, the _Fitafitas_, who constitute the police,
hospital corpsmen and interpreters for the naval administration. The
Samoans’ keen feeling for social distinction makes them particularly
able to co-operate with a government in which there is a hierarchy
of officialdom; the shoulder stars and bars are fitted into their
own system of rank without confusion. When the Governor and group of
officers pay an official visit, the native-talking chief distributes
the kava, first to the Governor, then to the highest chief among the
hosts, then to the Commander of the Naval Yard, then to the next
highest chief, without any difficulty.
In all the descriptions of Samoan life, one of the points which must
have struck the reader most forcibly is the extreme flexibility of the
civilisation as it is found to-day. This flexibility is the result
of the blending of the various European ideas, beliefs, mechanical
devices, with the old primitive culture. It is impossible to say
whether it is due to some genius in the Samoan culture itself, or to
fortunate accident, that these foreign elements have received such
a thorough and harmonious acculturation. In many parts of the South
Seas contact with white civilisation has resulted in the complete
degeneration of native life, the loss of native techniques, and
traditions, and the annihilation of the past. In Samoa this is not
so. The growing child is faced by a smaller dilemma than that which
confronts the American-born child of European parentage. The gap
between parents and children is narrow and painless, showing few of
the unfortunate aspects usually present in a period of transition.
The new culture, by offering alternative careers to the children has
somewhat lightened the parental yoke. But essentially the children
are still growing up in a homogeneous community with a uniform set of
ideals and aspirations. The present ease of adolescence among Samoan
girls which has been described cannot safely be attributed to a period
of transition. The fact that adolescence can be a period of unstressed
development is just as significant. Given no additional outside
stimulus or attempt to modify conditions, Samoan culture might remain
very much the same for two hundred years.
But it is only fair to point out that Samoan culture, before white
influence, was less flexible and dealt less kindly with the individual
aberrant. Aboriginal Samoa was harder on the girl sex delinquent than
is present-day Samoa. And the reader must not mistake the conditions
which have been described for the aboriginal ones, nor for typical
primitive ones. Present-day Samoan civilisation is simply the result
of the fortuitous and on the whole fortunate impetus of a complex,
intrusive culture upon a simpler and most hospitable indigenous one.
In former times, the head of the household had life and death powers
over every individual under his roof. The American legal system and
the missionary teachings between them have outlawed and banished
these rights. The individual still benefits by the communal ownership
of property, by the claims which he has on all family land; but he
no longer suffers from an irksome tyranny which could be enforced
with violence and possible death. Deviations from chastity were
formerly punished in the case of girls by a very severe beating and a
stigmatising shaving of the head. Missionaries have discouraged the
beating and head shaving, but failed to substitute as forceful an
inducement to circumspect conduct. The girl whose sex activities are
frowned upon by her family is in a far better position than that of her
great-grandmother. The navy has prohibited, the church has interdicted
the defloration ceremony, formerly an inseparable part of the marriages
of girls of rank; and thus the most potent inducement to virginity has
been abolished. If for these cruel and primitive methods of enforcing
a stricter régime there had been substituted a religious system which
seriously branded the sex offender, or a legal system which prosecuted
and punished her, then the new hybrid civilisation might have been as
heavily fraught with possibilities of conflict as the old civilisation
undoubtedly was.
This holds true also for the ease with which young people change their
residence. Formerly it might have been necessary to flee to a great
distance to avoid being beaten to death. Now the severe beatings are
deprecated, but the running-away pattern continues. The old system of
succession must have produced many heartburns in the sons who did not
obtain the best titles; to-day two new professions are open to the
ambitious, the ministry and the _Fitafitas_. The taboo system, although
never as rigorous in Samoa as in other parts of Polynesia, undoubtedly
compelled the people to lead more circumspect lives and stressed more
vividly difference in rank. The few economic changes which have been
introduced have been just sufficient to slightly upset the system
of prestige which was based on display and lavish distribution of
property. Acquiring wealth is easier, through raising copra, government
employment, or manufacturing curios for the steamer-tourist trade on
the main island. Many high chiefs do not find it worth while to keep up
the state to which they are entitled, while numerous upstarts have an
opportunity to acquire prestige denied to them under a slower method of
accumulating wealth. The intensity of local feeling with its resulting
feuds, wars, jealousies and conflicts (in the case of inter-marriage
between villages) is breaking down with the improved facilities for
transportation and the co-operation between villages in religious and
educational matters.
Superior tools have partially done away with the tyranny of the master
craftsman. The man who is poor, but ambitious, finds it easier to
acquire a guest house than it would have been when the laborious highly
specialised work was done with stone tools. The use of some money and
of cloth, purchased from traders, has freed women from part of the
immense labour of manufacturing mats and tapa as units of exchange and
for clothing. On the other hand, the introduction of schools has taken
an army of useful little labourers out of the home, especially in the
case of the little girls who cared for the babies, and so tied the
adult women more closely to routine domestic tasks.
Puberty was formerly much more stressed than it is to-day. The
menstrual taboos against participation in the kava ceremony and in
certain kinds of cooking were felt and enforced. The girl’s entrance
into the _Aualuma_ was always, not just occasionally, marked by a
feast. The unmarried girls and the widows slept, at least part of the
time, in the house of the _taupo_. The _taupo_ herself had a much
harder life. To-day she pounds the kava root, but in her mother’s
day it was chewed until jaws ached from the endless task. Formerly,
should a defection from chastity be disclosed at her marriage, she
faced being beaten to death. The adolescent boy faced tattooing, a
painful, wearisome proceeding, additionally stressed by group ceremony
and taboo. To-day, scarcely half of the young men are tattooed;
the tattooing is performed at a much more advanced age and has no
connection with puberty; the ceremonies have vanished and it has become
a mere matter of a fee to the artist.
The prohibitions against blood revenge and personal violence have
worked like a yeast in giving greater personal freedom. As many of the
crimes which were formerly punished in this fashion are not recognised
as crimes by the new authorities, no new mechanism of punishment has
been devised for the man who marries the divorced wife of a man of
higher rank, the miscreant who gossips outside his village and so
brings his village into disrepute, the insolent detractor who recites
another’s genealogy, or the naughty boy who removes the straws from the
pierced cocoanuts and thus offers an unspeakable affront to visitors.
And the Samoan is not in the habit of committing many of the crimes
listed in our legal code. He steals and is fined by the government as
he was formerly fined by the village. But he comes into very slight
conflict with the central authorities. He is too accustomed to taboos
to mind a quarantine prohibition which parades under the same guise;
too accustomed to the exactions of his relations to fret under the
small taxation demands of the government. Even the stern attitude
formerly taken by the adults towards precocity has now been subdued,
for what is a sin at home becomes a virtue at school.
The new influences have drawn the teeth of the old culture.
Cannibalism, war, blood revenge, the life and death power of the
_matai_, the punishment of a man who broke a village edict by burning
his house, cutting down his trees, killing his pigs, and banishing his
family, the cruel defloration ceremony, the custom of laying waste
plantations on the way to a funeral, the enormous loss of life in
making long voyages in small canoes, the discomfort due to widespread
disease—all these have vanished. And as yet their counterparts in
producing misery have not appeared.
Economic instability, poverty, the wage system, the separation of the
worker from his land and from his tools, modern warfare, industrial
disease, the abolition of leisure, the irksomeness of a bureaucratic
government—these have not yet invaded an island without resources
worth exploiting. Nor have the subtler penalties of civilisation,
neuroses, philosophical perplexities, the individual tragedies
due to an increased consciousness of personality and to a greater
specialisation of sex feeling, or conflicts between religion and other
ideals, reached the natives. The Samoans have only taken such parts of
our culture as made their life more comfortable, their culture more
flexible, the concept of the mercy of God without the doctrine of
original sin.
APPENDIX IV
THE MENTALLY DEFECTIVE AND THE MENTALLY DISEASED
Without any training in the diagnosis of the mentally diseased and
without any apparatus for exact diagnosis of the mentally defective,
I can simply record a number of amateur observations which may be of
interest to the specialist interested in the possibilities of studying
the pathology of primitive peoples. In the Manu’a Archipelago with a
population of a little over two thousand people, I saw one case which
would be classed as idiocy, one imbecile, one boy of fourteen who
appeared to be both feeble-minded and insane, one man of thirty who
showed a well-systematised delusion of grandeur, and one sexual invert
who approximated in a greater development of the breasts, mannerism
and attitudes of women and a preference for women’s activities, to the
norm of the opposite sex. The idiot child was one of seven children;
he had a younger brother who had walked for over a year, and the
mother declared that there were two years between the children. His
legs were shrunken and withered, he had an enormous belly and a large
head set very low on his shoulders. He could neither walk nor talk,
drooled continually, and had no command over his excretory functions.
The imbecile girl lived on another island and I had no opportunity to
observe her over any length of time. She was one or two years past
puberty and was pregnant at the time that I saw her. She could talk and
perform the simple tasks usually performed by children of five or six.
She seemed to only half realise her condition and giggled foolishly
or stared vacantly when it was mentioned. The fourteen-year-old
boy was at the time when I saw him definitely demented, giving an
external picture of catatonic dementia præcox. He took those attitudes
which were urged upon him, at times, however, becoming violent and
unmanageable. The relatives insisted that he had always been stupid but
only recently become demented. For this I have only their word as I
was only able to observe the boy during a few days. In no one of these
three cases of definite mental deficiency was there any family history
which threw any light upon the matter. Among the girls whom I studied
in detail only one, Sala, discussed in Chapter X, was sufficiently
inferior to the general norm of intelligence to approximate to a moron.
The man with the systematised delusion of grandeur was said to be
about thirty years of age. Gaunt and emaciated, he looked much older.
He believed that he was Tufele, the high chief of another island and
the governor of the entire archipelago. The natives conspired against
him to rob him of his rank and to exalt an usurper in his stead. He
was a member of the Tufele family but only very remotely so that his
delusion bore no relation to reality as he would never have had any
hope of succeeding to the title. The natives, he said, refused to give
him food, mocked him, disallowed his claims, did their best to destroy
him, while a few white people were wise enough to recognise his rank.
(The natives instructed visitors to address him in the chief’s language
because he consented to dance, a weird pathetic version of the usual
style, only when so opportuned.) He had no outbreaks of violence, was
morose, recessive, only able to work at times and never able to do
heavy work or to be trusted to carry through any complicated task. He
was treated with universal gentleness and toleration by his relatives
and neighbours.
From informants I obtained accounts of four cases on Tutuila which
sounded like the manic stage of manic depressive insanity. All four of
these individuals had been violently destructive, and uncontrollable
for a period of time, but had later resumed what the natives considered
normal functioning. An old woman who had died some ten years before
was said to have compulsively complied with any command that was given
her. There was one epileptic boy in Taū, a member of an otherwise
normal family of eight children. He fell from a tree during a seizure
and died from a fractured skull soon after I came to Manu’a. A little
girl of about ten who was paralysed from the waist down was said to be
suffering from an overdose of salvarsan and to have been normal until
she was five or six years old.
Only two individuals, one a married woman of thirty or so, the
other a girl of nineteen, discussed in Chapter X, showed a definite
neurasthenic constitution. The married woman was barren and spent a
great deal of time explaining her barrenness as need of an operation.
The presence of an excellent surgeon at the Samoan hospital during the
preceding two years had greatly enhanced the prestige of operations.
On Tutuila, near the Naval Station, I encountered several middle-aged
women obsessed with operations which they had undergone or were soon
to undergo. Whether this vogue of modern surgery, by giving it special
point, has added to the amount of apparent neurasthenia or not, it is
impossible to say.
Of hysterical manifestations, I encountered only one, a girl of
fourteen or fifteen with a bad tic in the right side of her face. I
only saw her for a few minutes on a journey and was unable to make any
investigations. I neither saw nor heard of any cases of hysterical
blindness or deafness, nor or any anæsthesias nor paralyses.
I saw no cases of cretinism. There were a few children who had
been blind from birth. Blindness, due to the extremely violent
methods used by the native practitioners in the treatment of “Samoan
conjunctivitis,” is common.
The pathology which is immediately apparent to any visitor in a
Samoan village is mainly due to the diseased eyes, elephantiasis, and
abscesses and sores of various sorts, but the stigmata of degeneration
are almost entirely absent.
There was one albino, a girl of ten, with no albinism in the recorded
family history, but as one parent, now dead, had come from another
island, this was not at all conclusive data.
APPENDIX V
MATERIALS UPON WHICH THE ANALYSIS IS BASED
This study included sixty-eight girls between the ages of eight and
nine and nineteen or twenty—all the girls between these ages in the
three villages of Faleasao, Lumā and Siufaga, the three villages on the
west coast of the island of Taū in the Manu’a Archipelago of the Samoan
Islands.
Owing to the impossibility of obtaining accurate dates of birth except
in a very few cases, the ages must all be regarded as approximate. The
approximations were based upon the few known ages and the testimony
of relatives as to the relative age of the others. For purpose of
description and analysis I have divided them roughly into three groups,
the children who showed no mammary signs of puberty, twenty-eight in
number, ranging in age from eight or nine to about twelve or thirteen;
the children who would probably mature within the next year or year and
a half, fourteen in number, ranging in age from twelve or thirteen to
fourteen or fifteen; and the girls who were past puberty, but who were
not yet considered as adults by the community, twenty-five in number,
ranging in age from fourteen or fifteen to nineteen or twenty. These
two latter groups and eleven of the younger children were studied in
detail, making a group of fifty. The remaining fourteen children in
the youngest group were studied less carefully as individuals. They
formed a large check group in studying play, gang life, the development
of brother and sister avoidance, the attitude between the sexes,
the difference in the interests and activities of this age and the
girls approaching puberty. They also provided abundant material for
the study of the education and discipline of the child in the home.
The two tables present in summary form the major statistical facts
which were gathered about the children specially studied, order of
birth, number of brothers and sisters, death or remarriage or divorce
of parents, residence of the child, type of household in which the
child lived and whether the girl was the daughter of the head of the
household or not. The second table relates only to the twenty-five
girls past puberty and gives length of time since first menstruation,
frequency of menstruation, amount and location of menstrual pain,
the presence or absence of masturbation, homosexual and heterosexual
experience, and the very pertinent fact of residence or non-residence
in the pastor’s household. A survey of the summary analyses joined to
these tables will show that these fifty girls present a fairly wide
range in family organisation, order of birth, and relation to parents.
The group may be fairly considered as representative of the various
types of environment, personal and social, which are found in Samoan
civilisation as it is to-day.
DISTRIBUTION OF GROUP OF ADOLESCENTS IN RELATION TO
FIRST MENSTRUATION
Within last six months 6
Within last year 3
Within last two years 5
Within last three years 7
Within last four years 3
Within last five years 1
——
Total 25
SAMPLE RECORD SHEET FILLED OUT FOR EACH GIRL
Household number Girl’s number Name Age (How estimated)
Matai Rank Father Rank Father’s residence
Mother Residence of mother Either parent been married before?
Economic status of household Church membership of father, mother, guardian
Menstruated? Date of commencement? Pain Regularity Estimate of physical development
Grade in government school? In pastor’s school? Any knowledge of English?
Foreign experience (outside Taū) Physical defects
Order of birth?
Best friends in order?
_Test Scores_ Religious attitudes
Colour naming
Rote memory for digits
Digit symbol substitution
Opposites
Picture Interpretation
Ball and Field
_Judgments on individuals in the village_ Personality
Most beautiful girl
Handsomest boy
Wisest man
Cleverest woman Attitude towards household
Worst boy
Worst girl
Best boy
Best girl
Attitude towards contemporaries
TABLE I
TABLE SHOWING LENGTH OF TIME SINCE PUBERTY, PERIODICITY, AMOUNT OF
PAIN DURING MENSES, MASTURBATION, HOMOSEXUAL EXPERIENCE, HETEROSEXUAL
EXPERIENCE, AND RESIDENCE OR NON-RESIDENCE IN PASTOR’S HOUSEHOLD
_Residence
_Time Elapsed _Homosexual _Heterosexual in Pastor’s
_No._ _Name_ Since Puberty_ _Periodicity_ _Pain_[12] _Masturbation_ Experience_ Experience_ Household_
1. Luna 3 years monthly abdo. yes yes yes no
2. Masina 3 ” ” ” ” ” ” ”
3. Losa 2 ” ” abdo. back no ” no yes
4. Sona 3 ” semi-monthly ” ” yes ” ” ”
5. Loto 2 months monthly back ” ” ” ”
6. Pala 6 ” ” none ” ” ” no
7. Aso 18 ” semi-monthly back ” no ” ”
8. Tolo 3 ” ” ” extreme ” ” ” ”
9. Lotu 3 years monthly ” ” yes yes ”
10. Tulipa 2 months ” abdo. back ” ” no yes
14. Lita 2 years ” back ” ” ” no
16. Namu 3 ” ” ” ” ” yes ”
17. Ana 2 ” Every three
months ” ” ” no yes
18. Lua 3 months monthly ” no no ” no
19. Tolu 4 years semi-monthly ” yes yes yes ”
21. Mala 2 months monthly ” ” no no ”
22. Fala 1 year ” ” ” yes yes ”
23. Lola 1 ” semi-monthly abdo. ” ” ” ”
23ᵃ. Tulipa 3 years monthly back ” ” ” ”
24. Leta 2 months ” none ” ” ” yes
25. Ela 2 years ” extreme ” ” ” ”
27. Mina 5 ” ” ” ” no no ”
28. Moana 4 ” bi-monthly abdo. back ” ” yes no
29. Luina 4 ” monthly extreme no ” no yes
30. Sala 3 ” semi-monthly ” yes ” yes no
[12] Abdomen—pain only there; back—pain only there; extreme—so
characterized by girl, never so ill that she couldn’t work.
TABLE II
FAMILY STRUCTURE
_No. Name 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Pre-Ads._
1. Tuna 1 3 x x
2. Vala 1- 3- x x x
3. Pele 3 4 x
4. Timu x x x
5. Suna x x x
6. Pola 3 2 1 x x
7. Tua 1 4 1 x
8. Sina 1 1 2 3 x x
9. Fiva 1 1 3 x
10. Ula 1 1 1 2 x x
11. Siva 1 4 x x
_Midways_
1. Tasi 1 4 x x x
2. Fitu 1 2 2 x x
3. Mata 1 1 3 x x x
4. Vi 3 3 1 1 x
6. Ipu 2 1 x x x
7. Selu 3
8. Pula 2 1 1 x x
9. Meta 3 1 1 x
10. Maliu 2 2 2 x x
11. Fiatia 3- 2- x x ½ ½ x
13. Tino 1 2 1 x x x
14. Vina 1 2 2 1 x x
15. Talo 2 4 x
_Adolescents_
1. Luna 2 5 1 x x x x
2. Masina 3 2 2 x x
3. Losa 2 1 x x x
4. Sona 2 x x x
5. Loto 4 1 x x x
6. Pala 3 3 1 x
7. Iso 1 3 1 x x
8. Tolo 1 2 x x
9. Lotu 3 5 x x
10. Tulipa 5 3
14. Lita 4 2 1 x
16. Namu 4 2 x x x
17. Ana 3- x x
18. Lua 7 1
19. Tolu x x x
21. Mala 3 1 x x x
22. Fala 1 3 3 1 x x x
23. Lola 1 2 2 x x x
23ᵃ.Tulipa 2 2 x x x
24. Leta 1 4 x
25. Ela 2 1 1 x x
27. Mina 1 x x x x
28. Moana 1 4 1 1ˣ 1ˣ x x x
29. Luina 1 x x
30. Sala 3 1 x x
KEY TO TABLE ON FAMILY STRUCTURE
_Column_ _Subject_
1 Number of older brothers
2 Number of older sisters
3 Number of younger brothers
4 Number of younger sisters
5 Half brother, _plus_, number older, _minus_, number younger
6 Half sister, _plus_, number older, _minus_, number younger
7 Mother dead
8 Father dead
9 Child of mother’s second marriage
10 Child of father’s second marriage
11 Mother remarried
12 Father remarried
13 Residence with both parents and patrilocal
14 Residence with both parents and matrilocal
15 Residence with mother only
16 Residence with father only
17 Parents divorced
18 Residence with paternal relatives
19 Residence with maternal relatives
20 Father is _matai_ of household
21 Residence in a biological family, i.e., household of parents,
children, and no more than two additional relatives.
x in the table means the presence of trait. For example, x in column 7
means that the mother is dead.
ANALYSIS OF TABLE ON FAMILY STRUCTURE
There were among the sixty-eight girls:
7 only children
15 youngest children
5 oldest children
5 with half brother or sister in the same household
5 whose mother was dead
14 whose father was dead
3 who were children of mother’s second marriage
2 children of father’s second marriage
7 whose mother had remarried
5 whose father had remarried
4 residence with both parents patrilocal
8 residence with both parents matrilocal
9 residence with mother only
1 residence with father only
7 parents divorced
12 residence with paternal relatives (without either parent)
6 residence with maternal relatives (without either parent)
15, or 30%, whose fathers were heads of households
12 who belonged to a qualified biological family (i.e., a family
which during my stay on the island comprised only two relatives
beside the parents and children).
INTELLIGENCE TESTS USED
It was impossible to standardise any intelligence tests and
consequently my results are quantitatively valueless. But as I had had
some experience in the diagnostic use of tests, I found them useful in
forming a preliminary estimate of the girls’ intelligence. Also, the
natives have long been accustomed to examinations which the missionary
authorities conduct each year, and the knowledge that an examination is
in progress makes them respect the privacy of investigator and subject.
In this way it was possible for me to get the children alone, without
antagonising their parents. Furthermore, the novelty of the tests,
especially the colour-naming and picture interpretation tests, served
to divert their attention from other questions which I wished to ask
them. The results of the tests showed a much narrower range than would
be expected in a group varying in age from ten to twenty. Without any
standardisation it is impossible to draw any more detailed conclusions.
I shall, however, include a few comments about the peculiar responses
which the girls made to particular tests, as I believe such comment is
useful in evaluating intelligence testing among primitive peoples and
also in estimating the possibilities of such testing.
_Tests Used_
Colour Naming. 100 half-inch squares, red, yellow, black and blue.
Rote Memory for Digits. Customary Stanford Binet directions were
used.
Digit Symbol Substitution. 72 one-inch figures, square, circle,
cross, triangle and diamond.
Opposites. 23 words. Stimulus words: fat, white, long, old, tall,
wise, beautiful, late, night, near, hot, win, thick, sweet, tired,
slow, rich, happy, darkness, up, inland, inside, sick.
Picture Interpretation. Three reproductions from the moving picture
_Moana_, showing, (_a_) Two children who had caught a cocoanut crab
by smoking it out of the rocks above them, (_b_) A canoe putting
out to sea after bonito as evidenced by the shape of the canoe and
the position of the crew, (_c_) A Samoan girl sitting on a log
eating a small live fish which a boy, garlanded and stretched on
the ground at her feet, had given her.
Ball and Field. Standard-sized circle.
Standard directions were given throughout in all cases entirely in
Samoan. Many children, unused to such definitely set tasks, although
all are accustomed to the use of slate and of pencil and paper, had
to be encouraged to start. The ball and field test was the least
satisfactory as in over fifty per cent of the cases the children
followed an accidental first line and simply completed an elaborate
pattern within the circle. When this pattern happened by accident
to be either the Inferior or Superior solution, the child’s comment
usually betrayed the guiding idea as æsthetic rather than as an
attempt to solve the problem. The children whom I was led to believe
to be most intelligent, subordinated the æsthetic consideration to
the solution of the problem, but the less intelligent children were
sidetracked by their interest in the design they could make much
more easily than are children in our civilisation. In only two cases
did I find a rote memory for digits which exceeded six digits; two
girls completing seven successfully. The Samoan civilisation puts the
slightest of premiums upon rote memory of any sort. On the digit-symbol
test they were slow to understand the point of the test and very few
learned the combinations before the last line of the test sheet. The
picture interpretation test was the most subject to vitiation through
a cultural factor; almost all of the children adopted some highly
stylized form of comment and then pursued it through one balanced
sentence after another: “Beautiful is the boy and beautiful is the
girl. Beautiful is the garland of the boy and beautiful is the wreath
of the girl,” etc. In the two pictures which emphasised human beings no
discussion could be commenced until the question of the relationship
of the characters had been ascertained. The opposites test was the
one which they did most easily, a natural consequence of a vivid
interest in words, an interest which leads them to spend most of their
mythological speculation upon punning explanations of names.
CHECK LIST USED IN INVESTIGATION OF EACH GIRL’S EXPERIENCE
In order to standardise this investigation I made out a questionnaire
which I filled out for each girl. The questions were not asked
consecutively but from time to time I added one item of information
after another to the record sheets. The various items fell into the
loose groupings indicated below.
_Agricultural proficiency._ Weeding, selecting leaves for use in
cooking, gathering bananas, taro, breadfruit, cutting cocoanuts
for copra.
_Cooking._ Skinning bananas, grating cocoanut, preparing
breadfruit, mixing _palusami_,[13] wrapping _palusami_, making
_tafolo_,[14] making banana _poi_, making arrow-root pudding.
_Fishing._ Daylight reef fishing, torchlight reef fishing,
gathering _lole_, catching small fish on reef, using the “come
hither” octopus stick, gathering large crabs.
_Weaving._ Balls, pin-wheels, baskets to hold food gifts, carrying
baskets, woven blinds, floor mats, fishing baskets, food trays,
thatching mats, roof bonetting mats, plain fans, pandanus floor
mats, bed mats (number of designs known and number of mats
completed), fine mats, dancing skirts, sugar-cane thatch.
_Bark cloth making._ Gathering paper mulberry wands, scraping
the bark, pounding the bark, using a pattern board, tracing
patterns free hand.
_Care of clothing._ Washing, ironing, ironing starched clothes,
sewing, sewing on a machine, embroidering.
_Athletics._ Climbing palm trees, swimming, swimming in the
swimming hole within the reef,[15] playing cricket.
_Kava making._ Pounding the kava root, distributing the kava,
making the kava, shaking out the hibiscus bark strainer.
_Proficiency in foreign things._ Writing a letter, telling time,
reading a calendar, filling a fountain pen.
_Dancing._
_Reciting the family genealogy._
_Index of knowledge of the courtesy language._ Giving the chiefs’
words for: arm, leg, food, house, dance, wife, sickness, talk,
sit. Giving courtesy phrases of welcome, when passing in front
of some one.
_Experience of life and death._ Witnessing of birth, miscarriage,
intercourse, death, Cæsarian post-mortem operation.
_Marital preferences_, rank, residence, age of marriage, number of
children.
_Index of knowledge of the social organisation._ Reason for
Cæsarian post-mortem, proper treatment of a chief’s bed,
exactions of the brother and sister taboo, penalties attached
to cocoanut _tapui_,[16] proper treatment of a kava bowl, the
titles and present incumbents of the titles of the _Manaia_
of Lumā, Siufaga and Faleasao, the Taupo of Fitiuta, the
meaning of the _Fale Ula_[17], the _Umu Sa_,[18] the _Mua o le
taule’ale’a_,[19] the proper kinds of property for a marriage
exchange, who was the high chief of Lumā, Siufaga, Faleasao and
Fitiuta, and what constituted the Lafo[20] of the talking chief.
[13] _Palusami_—a pudding prepared from grated cocoanut, flavoured
with red hot stone, mixed with sea water, and wrapped in taro
leaves, from which the acrid stem has been scorched, then in a
banana leaf, finally in a breadfruit leaf.
[14] _Tafolo_—a pudding made of breadfruit with a sauce of grated
cocoanut.
[15] Swimming in the hole within the reef required more skill than
swimming in still water; it involved diving and also battling with
a water level which changed several feet with each great wave.
[16] _Tapui._ The hieroglyphic signs used by the Samoans to protect
their property from thieves. The _tapui_ calls down an automatic
magical penalty upon the transgressor. The penalty for stealing
from property protected by the cocoanut _tapui_ is boils.
[17] The ceremonial name of the council house of the Tui Manu’a.
[18] The sacred oven of food and the ceremony accompanying its
presentation and the presentation of fine mats to the carpenters
who have completed a new house.
[19] The ceremonial call of the young men of the village upon a
visiting maiden.
[20] The ceremonial perquisite of the talking chief, usually a
piece of tapa, occasionally a fine mat.
GLOSSARY OF NATIVE TERMS USED IN THE TEXT
Aumaga (’aumāga)—the organisation of untitled men in each Samoan
village.
Aualuma—the organisation of unmarried girls past puberty, wives of
untitled men and widows.
Afafine—daughter (man speaking).
Aiga—relative.
Atali’i—son (man speaking).
Avaga—elopement.
Fa’alupega—the courtesy phrases, recited in formal speeches, which
embody the social pattern of each village.
Fale—house.
Faletua—“she who sits in the back of the house.” The courtesy term
for a chief’s wife.
Fono—a meeting. Specifically the organisation of titled men of a
village, district or island.
Fitafita—a member of the native marine corps.
Ifo—to lower oneself to some one whom one has offended or injured.
Ifoga—the act of doing so.
Lavalava—a loin cloth, fastened by a twist in the material at the
waist.
Lole—a sort of jelly fish; applied by the natives to candy.
Malaga—a travelling party; a journey.
Manaia—the heir-apparent of the principal chief; the leader of the
Aumāga; the heir of any important chief whose title carries the
privilege of giving a manaia title to his heir.
Matai—the holder of a title; the head of a household.
Moetotolo—surreptitious rape.
Moni—true, real.
Musu—unwillingness, obstinacy towards any course of action.
Olomatua—old woman.
Papalagi—white men; literally, “sky bursters.” Foreign.
Pua—the frangipani tree.
Soa—a companion in circumcision; an ambassador in love affairs.
Soafafine—a woman ambassador in love affairs.
Siva—to dance; a dance.
Tama—a child, a son (woman speaking).
Tamā—father.
Tamafafine—a child of the distaff side of the house.
Tamatane—a child of the male line.
Tapa—bark cloth.
Taule’ale’a—a member of the Aumaga; an untitled man.
Taupo—the village ceremonial hostess; the girl whom a high chief
has honoured with a title and a distribution of property.
Tausi—the courtesy term for the wife of a talking chief; literally,
“to care for.”
Tei—a younger sibling.
Teine—a girl.
Teinetiti—a little girl.
Tinā—mother.
Toa’ina—an old man.
Tuafafine—female sibling of a male.
Tuagane—male sibling of a female.
Tulafale—a talking chief.
Uso—sibling of the same sex.
NOTE ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF SAMOAN WORDS
The vowels are all pronounced as in Italian.
_G_ is always pronounced like NG.
The Glottal stop is indicated by a (’).
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
- Text enclosed by pluses is in small caps (+small caps+).
- Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.