1.  A village war god in Savaii.  Supposed to go before the troops, but invisible.  When the people turned out, according to hospitality usage, to take food to a travelling party, they would arrange to lay down ten pigs.  If the visitors, in recounting and shouting out in public, as they do, what they had got, said that there were eleven pigs, it was supposed that the god had added one.  Then they would compare notes, and say:  “Oh yes, it must have been that old woman we saw with a dry shrunk leaf girdle.”  There were other instances of the “devil’s dozen” in Samoa.

Once, when the people were driven by a war fleet from Upolu, the god became incarnate in a yellow man, went and lay down in a house, and there they killed him to please the Upolu people and stop the war, which the latter agreed to do in return for killing the god.  Out of respect to the god the people of that village never used the word la’ala’a for stepping over, but sought a new word in soposopo, which is still a current synonym for la’ala’a.

2.  La’ala’a was also the name of a god who took care of the plantations.  He guarded them by the help of the god thunder.  They never spoke of lightning as doing harm, it is always the thunder.  “Thunder” once struck the house of Fala and Paongo.  The family rose up, caught him, tied him up with pandanus leaves, and frightened him by poking him with firebrands.  He cried out in distress: 

    “Oh!  Fala, I’m burning,
    Oh!  Paongo, I wish to live!”

They decided to spare him, and make him a god to keep the rats away from their food.  They made a hieroglyphic scare for him, also, of a basket filled with pandanus leaves and charred firebrands, and hung it up among the trees, that he might know what to expect if he destroyed a house again.  This basket was also a scare for a thief, and an imprecation that thunder might destroy his plantation.

3.  La’ala’a was also the name of a god in Upolu, who was the champion of wrestlers.  The place was supposed to be filled with gods who came to wrestle.

4.  The same name was given to a god who predicted in war, sickness, and family events.  In sickness the people of the village confessed crimes, and prayed that they might be stepped over or forgiven.  He was supposed to dwell in the mountain, and any part of it sufficed as a confessional.

There was a priest also who, when he prayed to la’ala’a, became possessed, told the cause of disease, and forbade the evil conduct of the suffering culprit.

12.  LAA MAOMAO—­The great step.

This is one of the names of the rainbow, which was a representative of a war god of several villages.  If, when going to battle, a rainbow sprang up right before them and across the path, or across the course of the canoes at sea, the troops and the fleet would return.  The same if the rainbow arch, or long step, of the god was seen behind them.  If, however, it was sideways they went on with spirit, thinking the god was marching along with them and encouraging them to advance.