age court
might decide, and so the young man would go boldly forward, sit down
before the chiefs, bite the root five times, get up and walk away with
his mouth on fire.

If two families in a village quarrelled, and wished to fight, the
other heads of families and the chief stepped in and forbad; and it
was at the peril of either party to carry on the strife contrary to
the decided voice of public opinion.

These village communities, of from two to five hundred people,
considered themselves perfectly distinct from each other, quite
independent, and at liberty to act as they pleased on their own
ground, and in their own affairs.

Then, again, these villages, in numbers of eight or ten, united by
common consent, and formed a district, or state, for mutual
protection. Some particular village was known as the capital of the
district; and it was common to have a higher chief than any of the
rest, as the head of that village, and who bore the title of King.
Just as in the individual villages the chief and heads of families
united in suppressing strife when two parties quarrelled, so it was in
the event of a disturbance between any two villages of the district,
the combined chiefs and heads of families of all the other villages
united in forbidding strife. When war was threatened by another
district, no single village acted alone; the whole district, or state,
assembled at their capital, and had a special parliament to deliberate
as to what should be done.

These meetings were held out of doors. The heads of families were the
orators and members of parliament. The kings and chiefs rarely spoke.
The representatives of each village had their known places, where they
sat, under the shade of bread-fruit trees, and formed groups all round
the margin of an open space, called the malae (or forum), a thousand
feet in circumference. Strangers from all parts might attend; and on
some occasions there were two thousand people and upwards at these
parliamentary gatherings. The speaker stood up when he addressed the
assembly, laid over his shoulder his fly-flapper, or badge of office
similar to what is seen on some ancient Egyptian standards. He held
before him a staff six feet long, and leaned forward on it as he went
on with his speech. A Samoan orator did not let his voice fall, but
rather gradually raised it, so that the last word in a sentence was
the loudest. It is the province of the head village to have the
opening or king's sp