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Samoan Material Culture

Plank Canoes

Plank Canoes

4.Va'a alo. The bonito boat made of lashed planks, with two outrigger booms connected with float, propelled by paddling.
5.Amatasi. A plank canoe larger than the bonito boat, with two outrigger booms connected with the float, a platform over the booms, balancing spars on the right, and a mast for sailing.
6.Taumualua. A wide plank canoe without outrigger, modelled originally on whaleboat lines, idea foreign but technique native.
7.'Alia. The double voyaging canoe made of planks and consisting of two canoes lashed together.

All have top sides and bow and stern covers.

Outriggers are always on the left side. They consist of a float, cross booms, connecting pegs, and a connecting lashing. The float (ama) is a large spar of light wood set parallel with the canoe at a little distance and floats on the surface of the water to give the narrow canoe a wider support on the water. The outrigger booms ('iato) are lashed to both gunwales or upper edges of the sides of the canoe and project out to the left over the float. Being straight they are connected with the float by an indirect attachment of connecting pegs (tu'itu'i) and a lashing of braid (li) which extend between booms and float.

The 'alia voyaging canoe disappeared as foreign transport afforded an easier way of getting to the various islands in the group. Its disappearance was hurried by the coming in of the taumualua as far back as 1849, though the 'alia survived for some time after that. The taumualua was created from a foreign model and made wide enough with sennit-sewn planks to dispense with the outrigger float. It was much used in military operations to convey armed troops, and its sides could be barricaded to protect it from gun fire from the shore. It was paddled after the Samoan fashion with the paddlers facing the bow and propelling it like an ordinary canoe. As inter-district wars died down, the taumualua in turn gave way before the fautasi, a boat built purely for transport in the form of a large whaleboat with planks nailed together and rowed with oars resting in rowlocks. The fautasi in turn are rotting in their boat sheds, as the desire for speed and less labor has reached page 372the Samoan and he prefers to travel by the interisland steamers and motor boats that are now becoming more and more available. The fautasi are also community boats which require large crews. They are unsuited to the needs of the few. Governments have also extinguished any flickering remains of the Polynesian voyaging spirit by prohibiting travelling in boats between distant islands owing to the danger. In this way, the descendants of one seafaring race is protecting the descendants of another from the element that made their ancestors famous.

The 'iatolima and amatasi are no longer seen but an odd soatau still survives as an interesting relic of the past. The Samoans have reduced the canoe building craft to a minimum. Only such craft as have a material advantage which cannot be otherwise supplied are made. The types still made have therefore dwindled down to two, the va'a alo (bonito boat) and the paopao (dugout). The bonito still swims in Samoan waters and no easier method of securing them has been devised than the pearl shell hook trolled in the wake of a fast-paddled plank canoe. Even now change is taking place for more and more bonito canoes are being made of dugouts. It only remains for a cheap kind of oil engine to be put on the Samoan native market and the lingering type of plank canoe may join its contemporaries. The paopao is a necessity which cannot be discarded. So long as the people obtain an important part of their food supply from the lagoon, so long must every family have some kind of vessel to assist in obtaining it. The paopao is light, easy to manage, and not expensive in building. The complex of the hollowed log, the outrigger float, and the direct paddle is so inground in the methods of the people that the paopao is assured of existence for many years to come.