Summary

The data from Samoa would indicate that canoes with topsides or planks joined together by the right-through lashing and with the use of the covering page 679batten over the seam was widely used over the whole Polynesian area. Associated with it was the rectangular house with wall posts and wall plate erected before the principal rafters were put up. Distribution also indicates that with this wide-spread early culture was associated a knowledge of the bow and arrow, slings, and such games as dart casting with and without the use of the throwing cord, bowling with discs and string figures.

Certain culture traits, such as the marae type of religious stone structure, stone figures, stone food pounders, upright drums covered with skin at the upper end, and the nose flute, passed into or developed in eastern Polynesia without affecting Samoa. Associated with the worked stone complex was the tendency to improve the technique of the stone adzes used in the crafts.

The striking features distinguishing Samoan material culture from the general culture of eastern Polynesia are the arched houses and the flanged plank canoes. The other minor differences are not so striking when taken individually but grouped together they form a total that cannot be disregarded. Special efforts which resulted in improved technique were closely related with class distinction. Builders and tattooing artists obtained their most lucrative employment from the higher classes and used their crafts to still further accentuate social distinctions. Craftswomen were stimulated to their greatest efforts in developing the technique of bark cloth, shaggy garments, and fine mats through the material articles being utilized as the outward expression of social status.

The builders' guild in Samoa seems to have had more set rules of organization than their fellow craftsmen of eastern Polynesia. The definite rules of agreement in house building, with reciprocative prohibitions and definite immediate rewards during stages of the work, mark a business advance on the usual Polynesian attitude towards community labor while the actual development of a form of trade unionism with strikes and tabooing of employers, is an evolution in labor based on a commercial instinct foreign to eastern Polynesia. The usual Polynesian system of reciprocal labor, feasts and presents, is a fluid method that allows of time and opportunity in which to make payment on a credit system based on trust and honor. The Samoan system demands immediate provision of food and payment and is so business-like in its commercial bearing that the question arises as to whether the commercial principle underlying it is a purely local development or a diffusion from some higher culture to the west which did not spread further east than Samoa.

While the kava plant reached eastern Polynesia, the elaborate ceremonial associated with it in Samoa is lacking. The talking chiefs of Samoa were the systematizers of custom and usage. Their efforts in exercising their office resulted in a mass of ceremonial observances that included a set order of prestige among families and villages and the use of a distinct ceremonial page 680language. The talking chiefs thus rendered themselves indispensable in enabling high chiefs to comply with the etiquette demanded of their position. Much of the ceremonial has been developed locally but some elements may have been brought from the west and adapted to suit local conditions. Handy (14 a, p. 327) believes the ceremony connected with kava drinking to be adapted from the Buddhist ceremonial tea drinking. Ceremonial kava drinking and the guild of builders (Sa Tangaloa) are both associated with Tangaloa. As neither the elaborate kava ceremony nor the trade unionism of the Tangaloa builders reached eastern Polynesia, it may be surmised that they were both elements of a culture that diffused from the west as far as Samoa and its neighborhood and reached no further. Samoan material culture, apart from the elements rendered important by association with rank, was uninspired. It is not in the arts and crafts but in social organization and elaborate ceremonial that the peculiar genius of the people sought a congenial sphere of activity and found its greatest expression.

• The kava is finished,
• The strainer is dry,
• The chiefs from afar have emptied the bowl,
• And nought remains but the dregs.