Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/309

 still takes place on a piece of bark cloth, the umbilical cord is cut with a piece of bamboo, and the new baby is wrapped in a specially prepared piece of white bark cloth. If soap cannot be obtained, the wild orange provides a frothy substitute. The men still manufacture their own nets, make their own hooks, weave their own eel traps. And although they use matches when they can get them, they have not lost the art of converting a carrying stick into a fire plow at a moment's notice.

Perhaps most important of all is the fact that they still depend entirely upon their own foods, planted with a sharpened pole in their own plantations. Breadfruit, bananas, taro, yams, and cocoanuts form a substantial and monotonous accompaniment for the fish, shell fish, land crabs, and occasional pigs and chickens. The food is carried down to the village in baskets, freshly woven from palm leaves. The cocoanuts are grated on the end of a wooden "horse," pointed with shell or iron; the breadfruit and taro are supported on a short stake, tufted with cocoanut husk, and the rind is grated off with a piece of cocoanut shell. The green bananas are skinned with a bamboo knife. The whole amount of food for a family of fifteen or twenty for two or three days is cooked at once in a large circular pit of stones. These are first heated to white heat; the ashes are then raked away; the food placed on the stones and the oven covered with green leaves, under which the food is baked thoroughly. Cooking over, the food is stored in baskets which are hung up inside the main house. It is served on palm leaf platters, garnished with a fresh banana leaf. Fingers are the only knives and forks, and a wooden finger bowl is passed ceremoniously about at the end of the meal.

Furniture, with the exception of a few chests and cupboards, has not invaded the house. All life goes on on the floor. Speaking on one's feet within the house is still an unforgivable