Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/554

 Judicial Comedies in Samoa.

515

JUDICIAL COMEDIES IN SAMOA. By George H. Westley. BEFORE the white man came to Samoa, the natives possessed a judicial system which, though based upon the undesirable element of superstitious fear, was all that was required to make them live peaceful and decent lives. The foreigner brought lawlessness and disorder; he was but indif ferent honest in his dealings with the na tives, he refused to be judged according to their primitive methods, but worst of all he multiplied evil in the islands by introducing bad whiskey with all its attendant crimes. And so it came to pass that Samoa won for itself the very undesirable name of the Hell of the Pacific. The aborigines of Samoa had a series of well understood laws, even before they had a written language. Murder was punished with death; adultery with the loss of eyes, nose, or ears, these latter organs being bitten off by the person who had been wronged. For minor offenses, such as using disrespect ful language to a chief, rude behavior to strangers, pulling down a fence, or maliciously cutting a fruit tree, there were lighter and fit punishments, such as compelling the culprit to sit for hours in the broiling sun, hanging him up by the heels, beating him with clubs, or, more picturesquely, making him take five bites at a certain pungent root which is hotter than cayenne pepper, or play at hand-ball with an unpleasantly prickly little creature known as the sea-urchin. The machinery of their judicial system consisted of oaths, ordeals, and compurga tion. When a crime had been committed, an order was given by the chief for all the townsfolk to gather on the village green. Floor-mats were brought from the nearest houses and laid upon the turf, in the shade of a spreading tree. Each villager would then take oath that he was clear of any com

plicity in the offense — all save the guilty one, who, fearing the vengeance of the aitu, the god of the town, would not dare to take the oath of innocence. Another method of discovering the culprit was this. The chief would take a certain plant and chew it, eject ing the juice into the hollow of his right hand. Then extending his arm full length, he would solemnly call over the names of his people; so long as the innocent were named the fluid in the hollow of his hand would give no sign, but on the mention of the guilty one, the liquor would run over the edge of his hand and up his arm. If several persons were involved in the crime, the degree of each one's guilt was determined by the distance the fluid ran up the chief's arm, before it spilled to the ground. These and other picturesque methods of determining guilt have gradually been sup planted by the more prosaic modern judicial forms, — not entirely however, for when by the Berlin Act of 1889, Great Britain, the United States, and Germany concluded to establish in Samoa a Supreme Court in which foreigners could have their disputes settled, it was at the same time agreed that the natives should be allowed, if they chose, to try their own cases in their own peculiar way. And in some parts of the islands, the old customs are still continued. For some years previous to this Berlin Act, and while the foreign element was increas ing, an element which, as I have said, would not recognize the native courts, and did not particularly desire any other, Samoa was in a sort of legal pandemonium. A rowdy half-caste population had sprung up, who led the natives into all the vices of their beach -combing progenitors; the sale of liquors of the vilest and most maddening description was permitted without restric