CHURCHILL— SAMOAN KAVA CUSTOM 



'o nai mu'amu'a o le toafa, some fresh things of the clearing 



ma nai sigano o Le Toluai'ava. and pandanus blooms of Le Toluai'ava. 



Alu atu le manogi, alu atu le The fragrance spreads, the odor spreads, 

 sasala. 



This bepraised fragrance of the kava has naught in common with 

 the bouquet of a generous wine, the cup does not pause at the lip 

 to double the enjoyment. It is the diffused odor of the kava when it 

 is mixing in the bowl, not infrequently one sees the older men — and 

 appetite is always a riper treasure to men of experience — scoop the 

 air toward them from the direction of the bowl and sniff aloud their 

 enjoyment. Yet to the man from colder lands the fragrance is 

 scarcely perceptible unless his attention is particularly directed upon 

 it, even then he recognizes no such pleasure as inspires these simple 

 Samoan lays. 



The source of the kava has engaged the Samoan thought, it finds 

 its place in myth, it has become associated with some of the greater 

 heroes of the days when men and gods interchanged communication 

 and the joys of mutual larceny. 



In my intimate acquaintance with the Samoan habit of thought, 

 with what I hope is a warmth of sympathy, I cannot find the myth- 

 maker conscious to himself of creating fiction. In that primitive, 

 simple, in many respects clever, childlike frame of mind there is felt 

 a necessity to explain the interesting common things of life. The 

 explanation may be, in most cases is, somewhat absurd to our rational- 

 ism, but all that is required is that it shall be satisfactory to the primi- 

 tive intelligence. We can picture to ourselves the primitive man 

 thinking out origins with the feeble aid of his own undeveloped men- 

 tality. After much thought he forms in mind an explanation. Now 

 to such a mind the most wonderful thing in life is that he thinks, the 

 most incomprehensible. When he has created a mental image through 

 processes of ratiocination he cannot recognize his own power of author- 

 ship, he is convinced that this which is in his mind was put there by 

 someone external to himself, that it is a memory even though the 

 source has escaped his recollection. He is quite as satisfied with this 

 imperfection of recollection as our children find the "once upon a 

 time" a satisfactory chronology. Therefore when he emits the fiction 

 of his own intelligence he gives it currency as a tradition from some 

 indefinite source in his own distant past; his ignorance of his own 

 intellectuality has established for his community a myth without any 

 consciousness of fiction or yet of novelty. 



Thus we have the beginning of kava. First we shall see how 



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