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.
Pākehā , the Māori word for "pig", and , one of the Māori words for "flea", and therefore expresses derogatory implications. There is no etymological or linguistic support for this notion—like all Polynesian languages, Māori is generally very conservative in terms of vowels; it would be extremely unusual for "pā-" to derive from "". The word itself may come from the proto-polynesian root "*puaka", known in every Polynesian language (" in Tongan, Uvean, Futunian, Rapa, Marquisian, Niuean, Rarotongan, Tokelauan, and Tuvaluan; it evolved to the later form in Samoan, Tahitian, some Rapa dialects, and Hawaiian); or it might be borrowed or