Identifier: samoaumawherelif00chur (find matches)
Title: Samoa 'uma, where life is different
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Churchill, Llewella Pierce, Mrs. (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Forest and Stream publishing company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ion mayhave consumed hours, but nothing may be abatedof its slow formalities. When the last speech hasbeen made the Falefa chiefs promptly retire, only thetaupou Fenunuivao and the manaia Fonoti remainingto look after the comfort and entertainment of thevisiting party. When the chiefs return later they takethe place of guests in their own house, for the visitorsthereafter occupy the end of the house. These are the official formalities of courtesy as be-tween town and town. Of the individual courtesiesas between man and man there is an enormousvolume. Some become familiar through frequenthearing, such as the vaeane with which a Samoan in-terrupts one speaking, or the tidou with which hecrosses your path, both corresponding to the Englishpardon me, such as the wish for health, soifua,which greets a sneeze or a yawn. This mass offormalism is a tax on the mind to remember, its cere-monies are long drawn out and intricate. It is strangeto reflect that it is the ceremony of bare savages. 56
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A manaia with heading-knife KAVA—THE CEREMONIAL DRINK. The very core and center of Samoan life is a clumpof dried roots, the renowned kava, or, as the Samoansthemselves name it, ava. It is a necessary part ofevery ceremony, a part as great indeed as the wholein the estimation of the islanders. Tradition has beenas busy with it as with everything which the Samoansprize. Poets have sung its praises until now therehas come down from antiquity a stock of kava verseof no mean proportions and some considerable in-terest. Custom and ritual have grown up about itsuse until it has become encrusted with a mass of cere-mony difficult to master and practise. No festival iscomplete without its kava, no war may be fought oreven determined on if the kava has not been rightlyserved, and the beginnings of peace as well are in thekava bowl. With the earliest dawn the loud clappingof hands sounding over the malae signifies the morningdraught of kava served to the chiefs, the last thing atnight the fir

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