Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/77

 the younger children who remain at home. The heavy routine agricultural work falls upon the women who are responsible for the weeding, transplanting, gathering and transportation of the food, and the gathering of the paper mulberry wands from which bark will be peeled for making tapa, of the hibiscus bark and pandanus leaves for weaving mats, The older girls and women also do the routine reef fishing for octopuses, sea eggs, jelly fish, crabs, and other small fry. The younger girls carry the water, care for the lamps (to-day except in times of great scarcity when the candle nut and cocoanut oil are resorted to, the natives use kerosene lamps and lanterns), and sweep and arrange the houses. Tasks are all graduated with a fair recognition of abilities which differ with age, and except in the case of individuals of very high rank, a task is rejected because a younger person has skill enough to perform it, rather than because it is beneath an adult’s dignity.

Rank in the village and rank in the household reflect each other, but village rank hardly affects the young children. If a girl’s father is a matai, the matai of the household in which she lives, she has no appeal from his authority. But if some other member of the family is the matai, he and his wife may protect her from her father’s exactions. In the first case, disagreement with her father means leaving the household and going to live with other relatives; in the second case it may mean only a little internal friction. Also in the family