FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 19, iQoi. 
Tulimanu* 
Every race has its tradition, merely liistory wherein 
reliable particulars are lacking, of its own killer of things 
and possessor of the craft to interchange the jungle hail 
of "good hunting." It may be a Nimrod, that mighty 
hunter before the Lord; it may be the more delicately 
sculptured Diane Chasseresse. Whatever be the name 
that this tradition carries in the several lands, it is always 
a dim recollection of some one who had learned wood- 
craft in all woodland ways. Tulimanu is the Samoan ex- 
pression of the same recollection of the mighty hunter 
on the mountains. This paper is the attempt to rehabilitate 
out of fragmentary stories the personality of Tulimanu, 
the great hunter of Samoan legend. 
When first I heard the word it was applied to me by 
the king as interjected comment in some narrative of 
my search for shootable game in the bush back from 
Apia, It was a new word to me, and I made a mental 
note to look it up as soon as 1 got home. It was scarcely 
etiquette to ask the king what he meant by the term. 
In fact, the only way such a question, could be asked in 
Samoan is in literal translation "what's its name?" and 
that doesn't exactly seem to be the right way to speak to 
kings. One may be all sorts of a fellow citizen and a 
profound hater of all things monarchical, yet a king so 
long as he behaves himself does seem entitled to the 
lugs that kings have become accustomed to put on. I 
am. sure I never let Malietoa feel that I thought any the 
less of him for being a king, and I treated him accord- 
ingly. 
But at horhe I found that I was relying on a very poor 
authority when I took up the dictionary in order to find 
out the meaning of the word "Tulimanu." That blessed 
old dictionary, compiled by some enthusiastic missionary, 
gave but the single meaning of "a corner of a house." 
That was absurd, for at the least two reasons, each de- 
cidedly valid. Samoan houses are all oval, and you 
could march around one all day without finding the 
first vestige of a corner. In the second place the king, 
who was the most courteous of mortals, would never 
dream of calling me a house corner. That was a common 
experience with that dictionary as a help to the compre- 
hension of the Samoan language; it either did not give 
the word at all or it gave some nonsensical meaning that 
could not be stretched to cover the emergency. Before 
I put the dictionary. back on its shelf I must set down 
ite bright particular gem. In the English half of the 
vocabulary was this entry in its proper place, in alpha- 
betical order: "Blush, " No one who knows the 
Sam'oans at all can be surprised at the blank set against 
the word. Island m.orals will need a great improvement 
before the first blush shall struggle to suffuse the Samoan 
cheek, and after all it is problematical if any blush could 
make itself apparent through the prevailing coffee color 
of the South Sea complexion. This, of course, is merely 
by the way and interjectional, just to show how little 
valuable the enthusiastic missionary's dictionary is. But 
there was Talolo. well-spring of daily delight and source 
of information which might be accepted for fact if I could 
get it corroborated — he surely would be able to act as my 
better dictionary. 
"Talolo el" I asked, when next my juvenile companion 
found occasion to pay me a visit on my spacious 
veranda, "what did the king mean when he called me 
'tulimanu' the other day?" 
"He said you were a devil-girl," was. the prompt an- 
swer of the yoimg gentleman, whose conversation was 
always breezy, and the frankness of whose most simple 
statements was refreshing. 
"Moi, the boy is right," said Tongay who sat sewmg 
on a mat near me, it being her main task in life to keep 
one or two frocks ahead of the ravages of the native 
laundry methods. "Tulimanu is a devil." Then she 
sang out to Tanoa to bring her a burning billet, and 
toasted the tobacco and duly wrapped it in the dry banana 
leaf and lighted it at the coal and passed the cigarettes 
among the three of them. 
"Whv should the 'banana eater call you a devil-girl? 
Talolo 'asked with hot displeasure. Being a rebel the 
lad was not willing to call Malietoa King, even in ordinary 
conversation, and "banana eater" was the least abusive 
of his nicknames for his sovereign. "Why should you 
come here to Samoa and make him king when we want 
Mata'afa? Now he calls you a devil-girl, and won't you 
send for a man-of-war and have his head chopped off?" 
"Moi," said Tonga, in acquiescence, and a cloud of 
smoke from her cigarette, for Tonga was out and out a 
rebel, and had been in many a battle. 
Tanoa, however, slid unostentatiously away from the 
group. Not that he was excessively loyal— I never gave 
him credit for strong opinions on any subject. But he 
held a position of trust and emolum-cnt under the Gov- 
ernment of the United States, as captain of the Consular 
rowboat, and had probably received from his superior 
officer instructions not to talk politics and to support the 
administration. For my own part I felt some of the 
force, of the same sentiment, and made haste to sidetrack 
the discussion of the heartrending tangle of Samoan 
politics. ^ , , , - J- . 
"You explain It to me, Tonga, for surely the kmg did 
not intend to call me a devil." 
''Yes, he did," said saucy Talolo; "if Mata'afa had been 
the king he would never have called you a devil-girl; 
he's a high chief, and knows all the w®rds of compliment 
and courtesy. Oh, Tamaita'i, do tell your husband to 
bring back Mata'afa and make him king, and chop the 
•banana eater's' head off." 
Here was politics, and with a vengeance. 
"Be quiet, Talolo, so that Tonga may speak. How 
should you know what Mata'afa would do? He is a high 
chief, and you are not yet tattooed," That was a thing 
that the boy never liked to be reminded of, and to scold 
him with that as a clincher never failed to reduce him 
to abject humility. Talolo was very close to the age 
when' he should be tattooed, and for his own part he felt 
that the important and painful operation should have 
been done some time since. Any mention, therefore, of 
th^f.fact that he was still in the ba,by dass v^tts partic^il^rly 
galling. . 
"Go on, Tonga," I continued, after squelching the 
boy, "tell me what tulimanu means. Does it mean the 
devil, or what?" 
"Yes, Tamaita'i, it means the devil his name. All like 
same Nifoloa devil, The-One-With-Long-Teeth. All like 
same Ulufanuasese'e devil. The-One-Who-Coasts-On- 
Tree-tops, you hear hirp sliding in the still night when 
there is no wind, and then you suddenly hear a swoosh 
back in the bush. All like same Nafanua and Fe'e and 
Fa'aananafi, all devil, all aitu. Tulimanu devil too, aitu, 
and he lives back of Mount Vaea, on the Ala Sopo trail 
over the Tuasivi." 
"But what does the word itself mean?" I asked. 
"It means Run-after-Birds." replied Tonga. 
Then at last I found out what the king meant when he 
called Jne Tulimanu. It was really intended for a com- 
plimem. But what with the omissions of the missionary 
dictionary and the heat of Taioio^s political opinions^ I 
was a sufliciently long time in finding out that the king 
had done no more than apply to me the Samoan equiva- 
lent of .Nimrod. But .it was longer before I was able to 
get together any more information about the Samoan 
Nimrod, The younger Samoaris, with their abundant 
education at school, are rather losing precise informa- 
tion about the aitu of their land, former gods, but now 
devils. Few knew as much about Tulimanu as Tonga 
had told me, apparently none knew more. At last it 
resolves itself down to an exploration of the remotest 
cupbo.ards in the memory of old Lauta, the ancient chief 
of Vaiala, and probably the oldest man in Samoa. It 
was never easy to get him to tell a straight story of 
matters relating to his life as a heathen, and this con- 
sistent unreadiness was, in this case, still further com- 
plicated by the fact that his family had a blood feud with 
the family which numbered Tulimanu among its an- 
cestors. — ' 
But there was one thing that gave me a wrenching 
power on any story that Lauta might have tucked away 
in his memory — I could break it loose and wind it up to 
the surface for inspection. That lay in the fact that 
Lauta and I had financial dealings with one another; in 
fact I was his banker for varying sums. As the security 
for my loans was articles of wear, I suppose I might as 
well call myself a pawnbroker. That has to be in any 
money dealings with Samoans — they would borrow with- 
out limit, and never repay unless they deposit some valu- 
able possession as collateral for the debts which they 
incur. 
The only thing to be found in any Samoan house which 
has been found to be a valid security and which 
they will really work to reclaim is the ancestral fine 
mat; accordingly it is the only safe pledge for money 
loaned. These mats are remarkably fine pieces of hand 
weaving, as dainty as damask, and each one represents 
months and years of careful work. They seldom vary 
in size by more than a few inches one way' or the other 
from four yards square, and when it is at all possible to 
buy one, a price of $50 is about the lowest that can be 
made for even the newest. When such a mat has entered 
upon its career, in connection with the marriages of the 
chiefs and high-born maidens, it is well nigh impossible 
to purchase it at any price. The older a mat is, and the 
longer its history of successive wedding ceremonies, the 
more it is valued. Each mat has a name, its history is 
chanted when it is displayed before the admiring populace 
on the village green, songs are written about it in the 
most extravagant metaphors, and the highest chiefs do 
not disdain to pay it the most exaggerated forms of 
respect. From this short account it will be seen that in 
Samoan life the fine mat is a very large factor, and that 
a mat with a name and a history may well serve as. 
security for rather considerable sums. 
Nobody knows how old Lauta really is, for h€, of 
course, has no means of establishing his personal chro- 
nology. The first clue is his statement that when he 
was already a grown man and invested with the chiefship 
of Vaiala and the title of Le Patu, which goes with it, he 
came as a deck passenger from Pango Pango to Upolu 
on the "first man-of-war." As the Samoans have lost 
all remembrance of their discovery in the last century by 
Bougainville, who introduced the archipelago to geogra- 
phy as the Navigator Islands, this first man-of-war refers 
to the vessels of the United States Exploring Expedition 
under Wilkes in 18.39. 1^ Lauta were a grown man at 
that time, he must now be somewhere in the neighbor- 
hood of ninety years. However that may be, he does 
not look it, but it is not by any means impossible, for 
it was only in December last that the last survivor of 
that p-reat expedition died, in the person of Charles 
Erskine. of Roxbury, Mass., for a score of years a seaman 
in the navy. But looks af?ord small clue to the age of 
any islander: they are for the moet part aged men at 
forty years, and dead beore fifty, and no amount of sur- 
vival after the half-century mark seems to bring any 
further traces of age. Physically the old man showed 
no sign of feebleness, except for the fact that he could 
not walk with case, and that was not a mark of age, but 
was due to the fact that the elephantiasis had made his 
left leg as big around as a keg. Mentally he was as 
chipper and hearty an old boy as could be imagined, and 
the political harangues, an hour or more in length, that 
he frequently felt impelled to deliver at the gate of our 
compound, showed no lack of energy. 
Considering his advanced age one would have thought 
that Lauta would have outgrown the spendthrift habits 
of vouthi and would have settled down to prudent 
economy. Such, however, was not the case. The old 
chief was always broke, and always ti-ying to negotiate a 
loan, and as we, according to his way of thinking, had 
at our disposal the whole of the boundless resources of 
the United States, he fek t hat we sh ould supply his 
various needs. Hrs"1ifst-tbucTf was-for $100 on the secur- 
ity of a ground and chattel mortgage of a village up the 
coast To be sure the- village was in the rebel country, 
and"^ Lauta had no sHghtest vestige of authority over it 
any way but to be found out in a little trick of that nature 
did not 'in the least disturb the old man. After much 
palaver we established things on a business basis; he 
might borrow sums of $5 at a time, for one month, only 
.by depositing for each loan a genuinely old fine mat. 
If at the expiration of that month, he did not come to 
time with the money, the mat and all its traditions should 
pass irrevocably to me. I must say that the old chief did ■ 
live ti'p fo tl^is arra-ngement; much fd my regret, fof 59m? 
of the mats which were left in my custody I should have 
been glad to own at almost any price. 
While I was pursuing my investigations, with small 
result, into the history of Tulimanu, there came a crisis 
in the finances of old Lauta. I had on pledge a mat that 
may have been centuries old. Its legend was that it had 
been woven in the ninth heaven of all, and had been 
floated down for the wedding of some great hero ages 
ago. It was venerated by all Samoans. Even King Malie- 
toa, when I took it from the safe to show it to him, lifted 
one corner reverently to his head and said, "Take it 
away, for it dazzles my eyes," and that is about the high- 
est thing that can be said of any fine mat. The day was 
at hand when the $5 was to be paid or this treasure of 
a mat pass into my ownership. Perhaps the village 
women had not done well in the laundry business; per- 
haps there had been no cruiser in port, with sailors ready 
to hire ponies for wild gallops along the beach. At any 
rate the money market was absolutely flat in Vaiala; the 
old chief did not have the money, and came to beg an 
extension of time. It was within my rights to foreclose, 
but it did seem hard to acquire such a mat for so little 
and I gave up my chance to own the woven history, and 
granted an extension on condition that Lauta should 
tell me the story of the Samoan Nimrod. The ancient 
chief agreed. My boys prepared his bowl of kava, and his 
titles and degress were duly called when the first shellful 
was carried to him to drink. Then seated on a mat in 
a shady corner of the veranda, with his fly flapper hung 
over his shoulder, except when he needed emphasis, and 
used it to switch his back, Lauta told the old tale of 
Tulimanu, and he was probably the only man left in 
Samoa who could tell it. 
"It's all changed now, Tamaita'i," he began, after a 
pause to carry his memory back to the old times. "It's 
all so different. Now Samoans work to get money that 
they may eat the food that comes in the ships from your 
distant islands, the salmon and the 'pisupo' (pea soup is 
the generic name for tinned beef), and the biscuits that 
come in big tins. But before the Papalangi came Sa- 
moans were content without working. They found all 
their food in the sea and in the bush. When I was a 
boy we used to make parties and go back into the bush 
to net pigeons for days at a time. That has all been for- 
gotten; these Samoans know not how to ^veep the net in 
the daybreak to catch the pigeons. All have forgotten 
except myself, and I do not remember much, for I have 
not handled a pigeon net since I was a very young man. 
Even then Samoans were not such hunters as they used 
to be,, many generations ago, when they lived together 
in the bush before the great battle when they drove 
their enemies away from the shore. Ever since that battle 
our homes have been along the shore, and only a few 
villages still remain in the bush. You have been to one 
such, Tanungamanono, so near to Apia that you can 
walk to it without fatigue. The wagon road goes by it 
now, but that has only been within a tery few years. 
In old times the only way to reach it was by the Ala 
Sopo, from the mouth of the Vaisingano, through the 
former grove of fragrarJ|t pandanus which gave the river 
its name. Then all the people who followed that path 
over the Tuasivi from the other side, from Safata and 
Siumu, stopped at Tanungamanono to rest themselves, 
and to tell and hear the news before they came down to 
Apia. The change in the road is so recent that men yet 
young remember it. Well, Tulimanu, our last great 
Samoan hunter, was the chief of Tanungamanono in the 
ancient times, his name So'oalo. How long ago he lived 
I cannot tell you — we never have learned to count by 
years after your fashion, and. we know only by genera- 
tions. Some time you ask Fono up there in that town. He 
is wise in those things, and is of the family of So'oalo. He 
can tell you just how many generations ago he lived. I 
think it must have been ten. And So'oalo is buried on 
(he highest crest of Vaea, where runs the westward 
boundary of the Vaimaunga district. They buried him 
high in the bush because he was sucl^i a hunter, and they 
made his grave on the boundary Kne because he be- 
longed partly to Faleata, and each district wanted his 
'mana,' the supernatural power that great men leave be- 
hind them after they are dead. And you have been at 
his 'ti'a,' his pigeon netting platform on the Ala Sopo, 
half way to the Tuasivi ; it was thera that you stood when 
you shot your first pigeon. That is why we call you 
Tulimanu; it is because you stood on his Ti'a when you 
shot that pigeon, and his 'mana' entered into you makes 
you a good hunter. We Samoans know how such things 
are, we may be foolish in Papalangi ways, but we are wise 
in the ways of our own bush; it is because the spirit of 
Tulimanu has entered into you that you can kill the birds 
and hook the fish; that spirit makes you Tulimanu your- 
self. 
"So'oalo was not a born hunter. Until he came to 
the age when it was right for him to be tattooed, he 
seems to have been in no way different from the other 
boys of his village. Nor did he .slowly learn the ways 
of the bush and thus become a hunter through experience 
as I did myself, as all others have done except you tAvo, 
you who are Tulimanu because the 'mana' of the old 
Tulimanu entered into you when you shot your first 
pigeon on So'oalo's ti'a, and So'oalo, who became in one 
night Tulimanu, the chief of hunters, because in that one 
night there entered into him the magic of Pe'a and Fe'e, 
the bat and the cuttlefish gods. They were heathen 
gods, you know, and no longer do we pay any attention 
to them, except when things are going very bad with 
us, and even then we do not let the missionaries hear of 
it,' How did the might of these two gods enter into the 
chief? That is what I shall tell you, for that is all there 
is to the story of Tulimanu. All that I can tell to you is 
what the fathers have told to their children ever since 
the time when So'oalo wandered over our Upolu m.oun- 
tains, but how the 'mana' enters into a man I cannot tell 
you, for that is a mystery and a strange thing. 
"One morning, in the circle of housje chiefs, when the 
kava had been made and all the cUps carried in due 
order. So'oalo said. 'T go,' and there was none to ask 
him whither he went, for his was the highest rank of any 
chief m the circle of chiefs. So without knowing whither 
he went, ^hey replied. ' 'Tis well.' And So'oalo left the 
house, and with Wm went his tulafale or talking man, with 
the staff and the fly flapper pertaining to his office, for 
it is right that wh^re a chief goes there also shall go his. 
tulafal0^, else wov?ld th?r? l?e shame pn .the h'C^ of tl^t 
