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 malæ (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 speech, and to keep order in the meeting; and it was
the particular province of another to reply to it, and so they went
on. To a stranger the etiquette and delay connected with such meetings
was tiresome in the extreme. When the first speaker rose, other heads
of families belonging to his village, to the number of ten or twenty,