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

INTRODUCTION

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INTRODUCTION

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

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The Last Tafa'ifa (Malietoa Vainu'upo)

For three hundred years, before 1830, the ‘malo’ had remained with A'ana. By the early nineteenth century, however, some of the leading families had withdrawn from it. I'amafana was the last Tafa'ifa to lead this ‘malo’. But even before he died in 1802, the unity of the A'ana ‘malo’ was Disintergrating. Both Malietoa Vainu'upo and Tamafaiga (Leiataua Pe'a of Aiga-ile-Tai) were manoeuvring to occupy the Tafa'ifa. The ‘mana’ (power) of the great goddess Nafanua, even before I'amafana's death, had gone to Manono, to Tamafaiga and Lelologa, now the Taulaitu Sili (‘High Priests’) of the goddess. And without this mana the A'ana malo was further weakened.

Before I'amafana died he chose Malietoa Vainu'upo to succeed him to the Tafa'ifa. But Malietoa's succession was opposed by most of the faleupolu (the orator groups who had the right to bestow the Tafa'ifa titles), especialy the ‘Faleiva’ of A'ana. The only other serious contenders to the succession were Mata'afa (leader of Atua) and Tamafaiga (leader of Aiga-ile-tai and militarily the mainstay of the A'ana malo). Malietoa, unsure of this ability to openly oppose Tamafaiga's quest for the Tafa'ifa, supported Tamafaiga's struggle against Mata'afa. Supported by nearly all Savai'i and Upolu, Tamafaiga gained the Tafa'ifa after defeating Mata'afa in 1827 or 1828 in a short but brutal war known as, ‘O le Taua o le Taeao-fua’.

Tamafaiga's reign was short but brutally tyrannical. His harsh treatment of the A'ana people eventually turned the A'ana leaders against him. They hatched a plot to kill him; this, they did at Fasito'o in 1829.8

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The way was now open for Malietoa to gain the Tafa'ifa, after thirty years.

The murder of Tamafaiga turned Manono against A'ana; something which Malietoa had hoped for. Tamafaiga's death also turned most of the powerful families - who, through marital ties and historical circumstances, were related to Tamafaiga - against A'ana.

Faced by the overwhelming alliance of Tuamasaga, Savaii and Manono, led by Malietoa, A'ana could do little but make a last valiant stand.

Malietoa's armies ravaged the whole district, burnt villages to the ground, overran the pallisades of the defenders. Those who were captured - warriors, old men, women and children - were thrown systemmatically into a pit known as Tītō, and burnt alive. The fire raged for days.

The missionary John Williams arrived at Sapapali'i (Malietoa's main village in Savaii) in August 1830 and saw the last column of smoke billowing from A'ana. He condemned the massacre in his journal ‘Missionary Enterprises’, yet it was this battle which facilitated the task of planting the Christian Jehovah in Samoa. All Samoa, after this battle, was united under Malietoa. When he was converted to christianity, his ‘Kingdom’ quickly followed his example.

Convicts and Sailors

The first papalagi, such as Roggeveen in 1782, came in search of treasure (gold, spice, silver) but found none. After the massacre of several of La Perousse's crew in 1787, Samoa acquired a hostile reputation throughout the South Seas.9 This reputation for ferocity decreased as traders, whalers and beachcombers from Europe, America and Australia entered Samoa in the early page 10 decades of the nineteenth century.

The first papalagi, who ‘settled’ in Samoa, came during the end of I'amafana's reign about 1800. Folk history has it, that these men were primarily escaped convicts and sailors. Some of them were ‘adopted’ by leading chiefs, and their knowledge of firearms and new crafts put to good use. Some squabbled while drinking, and killed one another. Others fell under the ‘uatogi’ of the Samoans. The most colourful of these men was known as the ‘Tevolo o Tome’ (‘Tom, the Devil’ or ‘Irish Tom’.) He settled in Manono with one of the leading families, Tualauipopotunu. ‘Irish Tom’ helped the Manono people in their wars against other districts. He had numerous wives and servants; quickly acquired a reputation for meting out instant death to anyone who offended him; lost the support of even the chiefs who had offered him protection; was killed while shaving, by four taulele'a (untitled men).

The influence of these papalagi elements on Samoan life was slight and was quickly erased by the powerful influence of Jehovah.

Missionaries and Copra

After Malietoa's conversion in 1830, the protestant brand of christianity spread quickly throughout Samoa. It's growth was facilitated by a period of political stability and peace, and Malietoa's protection. By 1840, the London Missionary Society had consolidated its position by establishing congregations in strategic villages around the coast. The fear of French Catholicism increased the tempo of the Protestant crusade.10 Even though the page 11 conversion of the ‘benighted heathen’ was superficial, there were, by 1850, only a few die-hard forts of chiefly paganism left.

The growth of trade accompanied this process of christianisation. The new converts' thirst, not only for Jehovah and muskets, but for the other ‘goods’ of the papalagi, increased. This encouraged the growth of trade. To pay for European goods, the Samoans, at first, supplied ships with foodstuffs. But these were not sufficient. The growing demand in Europe for oil - (for soap and candles) - led to and stimulated the growth of the copra trade. Till by 1850 every village was producing copra.11

The effects of trade and missionary endeavour soon became physically evident. Concrete churches anchored villages to the malae; trading stores seemed to accompany each new church built, and Apia soon became the centre of Samoan life because it was becoming the commercial centre. These two activities also opened up, to the Samoans, a greater view of the papalagi world beyond the reef.

During the late eighteen forties, however, the hitherto uninterrupted mushrooming of churches and stores ran into difficulties in relation to the Tumua-Pule struggle. 1830 to 1841 was a period of political stability. This peace gave A'ana time to recover its strength. When Malietoa died in 1841, A'ana started intriguing to regain the Tafa'ifa. The missionaries and traders, concerned by the effects a civil war would have on their ‘enterprises’, attempted to heal the breach. But war broke out in 1848, and, from this year till partition in 1899, the Tumua-Pule rivalry again dominated the scene, frustrating every attempt, by the foreign powers, to establish a workable national government.