ke manner served as a platform to support a wooden
building. In this connexion we must not forget that the typical Samoan
house was circular or oval in contrast to the typical Tongan house,
which was oblong. The openings, which seemed to lead into the interior
of the monument, may have given access to the sepulchral chamber where
the bodies of the dead were deposited.

Slight as are these indications, they apparently point to the use of the
monument as a tomb. There is nothing, except perhaps its circular shape,
to suggest that it was a temple of the sun. As no such stone buildings
have been erected by the Samoans during the time they have been under
European observation, it may be, as Mr. Sterndale supposed, that all the
ruins described by him were the work of a people who inhabited the
islands before the arrival of the existing race.[136]

[136] H. B. Sterndale, _op. cit._ p. 352.

Sec. 8. _Origin of the Samoan Gods of Families, Villages, and Districts:
Relation to Totemism_

If we ask, What was the origin of the peculiar Samoan worship of animals
and other natural objects? the most probable answer seems to be that it
has been developed out of totemism. The system is not simple totemism,
for in totemism the animals, plants, and other natural objects are not
worshipped, that is, they do not receive offerings nor are approached
with prayers; in short, they are not gods, but are regarded as the
kinsfolk of the men and women who have them for totems. Further, the
local distribution of the revered objects in Samoa, according to
villages and districts, differs from the characteristic distribution of
totems, which is not by place but by social groups or clans, the members
of which are usually more or less intermixed with each other in every
district. It is true that in Samoa we hear of family or household gods
as well as of gods of villages and districts, and these family gods, in
so far as they consist of species of animals and plants which the
worshippers are forbidden to kill or eat, present a close analogy to
totems. But it is to be observed that these family gods were, so to say,
in a state of unstable equilibrium, it being always uncertain whether a
man would inherit his father's or his mother's god or would be assigned
a god differing from both of them. This uncertainty arose from the
manner of determining a man's god at birth. When a woman was in travail,
the help of several gods was invoked, one after the o