Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/204

 tional persistence and had forced her way to the head of the school by steady dogged application. Lita, more intelligent and more sensitive, had left school for one year because the teacher beat her and Sona had passed above her, although she was definitely more stupid. Sona came from another island. Both her parents were dead and she lived in a large, heterogeneous household, at the beck and call of a whole series of relatives. Intent on her own ends, she was not enthusiastic about all this labour and was also unenthusiastic about most of her relatives. But one older cousin, the most beautiful girl in the village, had caught her imagination. This cousin, Manita, was twenty-seven and still unmarried. She had had many suitors and nearly as many lovers but she was of a haughty and aggressive nature and men whom she deemed worthy of her hand were wary of her sophisticated domineering manner. By unanimous vote she was the most beautiful girl in the village. Her lovely golden hair had contributed to half a dozen ceremonial headdresses. Her strategic position in her own family was heightened by the fact that her uncle, who had no hereditary right to make a taupo, had declared Manita to be his taupo. There was no other taupo in the village to dispute her claim. The murmurings were dying out; the younger children spoke of her as a taupo without suspicion; her beauty and ability as a dancer made it expedient to thus introduce her to visitors. Her family did not press her to marry, for the longer she remained unmarried, the stronger waxed the upstart legend.