Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/310

 breach of etiquette, and the visitor must learn to sit cross- legged for hours without murmuring.

The Samoans have been Christian for almost a hundred years. With the exception of a small number of Catholics and Mormons, all the natives of American Samoa are adherents of the London Missionary Society, known in Samoa as the "Church of Tahiti," from its local origin. The Congregationalist missionaries have been exceedingly successful in adapting the stern doctrine and sterner ethics of a British Protestant sect to the widely divergent attitudes of a group of South Sea islanders. In the Missionary boarding-schools they have trained many boys as native pastors and as missionaries for other islands, and many girls to be the pastors' wives. The pastor's house is the educational as well as the religious centre of the village. In the pastor's school the children learn to read and write their own language, to which the early missionaries adapted our script, to do simple sums and sing hymns. The missionaries have been opposed to teaching the natives English, or in any way weaning them away from such of the simplicity of their primitive existence as they have not accounted harmful. Accordingly, although the elders of the church preach excellent sermons and in many cases have an extensive knowledge of the Bible (which has been translated into Samoan), although they keep accounts, and transact lengthy business affairs, they speak no English, or only very little of it. On Taŭ there were never more than half a dozen individuals at one time who had any knowledge of English.

The Naval Government has adopted the most admirable policy of benevolent non-interference in native affairs. It establishes dispensaries and conducts a hospital where native nurses are trained. These nurses are sent out into the villages where they have surprising success in the administration of the very simple remedies at their command, castor oil, iodine,