History of Samoa who brought the tools necessary to create the art of tatau, or in English tattoo, whence came the traditional Samoan "malofie" (also known as "pe'a" for men and as "malu" for women). The foundation of the cultural tradition of Samoa, or the fa'asamoa came with the rise of the warrior queen Nafanua. Her rule instituted traditions of the fa'amatai or local family and village and regional chiefly systems, a decentralized system. Her niece Salamasina continued under this system and their time is considered a golden age of Samoan cultural traditions. For a long period, a Tongan aristocracy ruled in Samoa.
Samoan language and a reversed apostrophe, ' ("koma liliu" or "ʻokina"), indicates the glottal stop, as in many other Polynesian languages. The ' ("ʻokina") is often replaced by ("apostrophe") in modern usage. The additional letters h, k, r are used in foreign loanwords, apart from the single interjection "puke(ta)!" 'gotcha!'; although the sound is found in native words in colloquial speech, it is spelled t. The letter g represents a velar nasal, as in the English word "sing," rather than a voiced velar stop, as in the English "go." Thus, the correct pronunciation of Pago Pago is not "Pay-go Pay-go" but "Pah-ngo