Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Samoan Material Culture

[introduction]

General features. Samoan horticulture is not very intensive. The people grew enough to supply their own needs with something extra to comply with the levy so often made for the entertainment of travellers and guests and special festivals. The tuberous food plants cultivated were the yam, page 545talo, sweet potato, and arrowroot. The sugar cane, kava, and ti were also cultivated; sugar cane principally for its leaves to furnish the lau thatch for houses, the ti to furnish everyday clothing, and kava not only for personal use as a beverage but to supply the tungase presentations to visiting chiefs. The paper mulberry for clothing and the lau'ie, laufala, and laupaongo (kinds of pandanus) for the various mats were also planted. The banana, breadfruit, and coconut also received some attention. The cultivations were made in clearings in the forest inland of the villages and usually on the uplands above sea level. In Olosenga, the cultivations are a considerable distance from the coastal village and long carries have to be made along the narrow zigzag track which connects with the high tablelands. On the smaller areas around the back of the houses, kava, sometimes sugar cane and bananas are planted to supplement supplies. Some pandanus is also grown near the houses. Swamp lands are usually near the villages in the hollow between the rising hills at the back of the village and the rising shelf of the beach in front. Bush clearings are usually small and confined to separate families. In the swampy ground, however, when of some extent, various families share the area which is divided off into plots by drains and paths.

The bush clearings are now readily formed by using the heavy introduced bush knife which performs all sorts of functions from whittling small wedges and cutting up pigs to felling fairly large saplings. It is now the inseparable companion of the man who walks into the forest. Formerly, the bush clearings had to be made with implements of stone. The small scrub and light saplings were ringbarked. The whole was then fired and it mattered not that a large tree remained standing here and there in the clearing.