Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/110

 whose title is the occasion of a great festival and enormous distribution of property by her chief to the talking chiefs who must hereafter support and confirm her rank, a Samoan girl of good family has two ways of making her début. The first, the formal entry into the Aualuma is often neglected and is more a formal fee to the community than a recognition of the girl herself. The second way is to go upon a malaga, a formal travelling party. She may go as a near relative of the taupo in which case she will be caught up in a whirl of entertainment with which the young men of the host village surround their guests; or she may travel as the only girl in a small travelling party in which case she will be treated as a taupo. (All social occasions demand the presence of a taupo, a manaia, and a talking chief; and if individuals actually holding these titles are not present, some one else has to play the rôle.) Thus it is in inter-village life, either as a member of the Aualuma who call upon and dance for the manaia of the visiting malaga, or as a visiting girl in a strange village, that the unmarried Samoan girl is honoured and recognised by her community.

But these are exceptional occasions. A malaga may come only once a year, especially in Manu'a which numbers only seven villages in the whole archipelago. And in the daily life of the village, at crises, births, deaths, marriages, the unmarried girls have no ceremonial part to play. They are simply included with the "women of the household" whose duty it is to prepare the layette for the new baby, or carry stones to