III

Samoa's most present menace—and this has its roots in commerce—is the contamination of its strange race by Melanesians and Chinese. The European half-caste affords no such problem, being fair-skinned and of Aryan stock on both sides and therefore to be completely assimilated. At the time of writing there are Samoan girls living openly with Chinese coolies in the crowded cubicles on the plantations of the Reparation Estates; and the Chinese half-castes are estimated to number between a thousand and fifteen hundred, as against a total native population of 40,000. The coolies were brought to Samoa by the New Zealand Administration. Although supposed to be against the law, and rigorously disallowed by the Germans, the process of racial-pollution, under New Zealand rule, is permitted to continue unchecked. There is, moreover, a "black-boy village" on Vailele (Government) Plantation, formed under the regime of General Richardson page 270and at his suggestion, where Solomon Islanders (coal-black negritos) are living with Samoan women.

The seriousness of the negrito menace can be gauged by the fact that there are villages in Samoa where the people all show a strong Melanesian strain—the result of some incursion or canoe-wreck of Fijians (who are fair-skinned as compared to Solomon Islanders) in the dim and distant past. The slanteyed Chinese half-caste business is fully as bad as regards the contamination of the Samoan race.

In the Minutes of the Fourteenth Session of the Permanent Mandates Commission, it will be seen, regarding 146 Melanesians who had been allowed to stay in Samoa after the expiry of their contracts,

"Sir George Richardson explained that Chinese labourers were not allowed to settle permanently in Samoa. The Melanesians had been brought over to the territory during the German occupation. They were good workers and very lawabiding. The New Zealand Government had tried to repatriate them, and those who desired to go had been repatriated to the Solomon Islands. The remainder in Samoa expressed a preference to remain in the country. They were in no sense a menace to the development of the population. Many of them had married Samoans, and the children were easily absorbed as Samoans…."

He stated further:

"Chinese labourers who stayed in the island did most probably form alliances with native women and desired to stay…. The fact that the Chinese labourers formed alliances with Samoan women could not be imputed to any fault of the Administrator.

"In reply to a further question by M. Sakenobe, Sir George Richardson said that it would be quite impossible completely to restrict contact between Chinese labourers and Samoan women. He had more belief in education than in the efficacy of legislation concerning sexual matters.

"Sir James Parr added that officially no contact was permitted between Chinese labourers and Samoan women. Oddly enough, the half-caste born of such an alliance was a very good worker."

page 271

I am prepared to believe that General Richardson believed that sexual instincts could and might be curbed by education. But it is absolute nonsense to suggest that it is impossible to restrict contact between Chinese labourers and Samoan women. There was a privately owned plantation in Palauli, Savaii, where Chinese were employed, the manager of which was continually requesting the Government to stop Samoan girls living (outside the plantation) with the coolies. A Government Proclamation was read. Ignored. And there the matter was allowed to rest. If I had had any jurisdiction in the matter, I would have guaranteed to put a stop to it within a week.

A Samoan girl's moral code¹ opposes her to going with a man unless, by living with him, she may be recognized as his wife. The problem therefore presents no difficulties at all.

The main attraction apparently of living with the Chinese is that the coolies give the greater part of their money to the women, who are allowed to live in complete idleness, the Chinaman even doing such housework as is done. The only other females in Samoa equally well situated in the latter respect are the wives of native pastors, who fill their fales with young girls who act as servants. It is said, of course, in various parts of the world, that if a woman has once had a Chinaman she never wants anybody else. None the less, there would be no difficulty in putting a stop to this business in Samoa.

For their attitude in the matter the parents of the girls are perhaps to be blamed. But there is something of the procurer and procuress in most parents. And an alliance with a foreigner is likely to be beneficial to the family in Samoa. Then, too, they are a strange people. An Englishman, an old resident there, once observed to me: "You might steal the favourite daughter of a chief from him, the apple of his eye; and provided you had done it by some smart trick, if you met him the next day he would laugh like anything and shake his head and say 'By Jove, that was a good tongaflti you made!'"—the implication being that the Samoans could appreciate the ingenuity of a stratagem even under these circumstances. Stevenson has remarked incidentally that pungent expressions are so much admired by the Samoans that they cannot refrain from repeating page 272those which have been levelled at themselves. And in relation to this characteristic I have a recollection of a debate—a matter of Government business—with some village chiefs in Savaii where they were clearly deliberately in the wrong with regard to some mistaken instructions given to them by another official who had gone on leave. By good luck the discussion which ensued went in a circle and so much in my favour that their talking-man was tied finally in a knot, and left hesitating at a loss for another line of argument. The controversy had been followed with close attention by the chiefs and orators assembled, and I shall not readily forget them in due course leaving the house, considerably abashed, yet chuckling—almost despite themselves—with an evident enjoyment of what they apparently considered the method of their own discomfiture. The white man, they admit, thinks more quickly than they do. They would not, however, be prepared to admit that his brain is better, in which possibly they are right.

No small part of New Zealand's trouble in Samoa has been caused by officials not sufficiently considering the ceremonial flair of the natives. It was no uncommon thing for officials to travel round in the course of their duties with incompetent interpreters, incapable of talking the chiefly language—youths picked up in Apia—totally unconscious that the atmosphere of the speech-making—for which they probably entertained an ill-concealed contempt—was electric with discomfort and ruffled feeling. They wanted to "cut the cackle" and get on with the job. It was the last way of getting the job done.

In the matter of the Administrator's malangas also, the trumpery rubbish—shoddy umbrellas, tins of cheap powder, and so forth, procured by the Native Department—that was presented to the owners of the houses where the party stopped was a positive disgrace. The average trader would have been ashamed to stock such junk. It would have been infinitely better to have given nothing. The Samoans are not fools, and are capable of detecting an article's quality and value.

To return to the point from which I have strayed away: A competent Administrator could have restricted contact between Samoan women and Chinese, without resort to the legislation, by precept and ridicule—directed at the chiefs.