Sources

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Asia-and-the-Pacific/Samoa.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoa

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Asia-and-Oceania/United-States-Pacific-Dependencies-AMERICAN-SAMOA.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoan_Islands

http://manoa.hawaii.edu/hpicesu/techr/152/04.pdf

If you haven't started yet the site is samoainfo.wikispaces.com. A good reference as to what it should look like is the contemporary issues and colonialism pages, done by Jeff. If everyone's pages look like this we'll be fine.

Early on the islands were eventually divided up between the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom (Samoa Tripartite Convention). Germany took Western Samoa, the US accepted Tutuila and Manu'a, which is now known as U.S. territory of American Samoa, and the UK ceded their lands in Samoa to Germany in exchange for the North Solomon Islands.

Contact with Europeans first took place in the early 18th century but did not intensify until the arrival of the British. The first man to sight the islands was a Dutchman named Jacob Roggeveen. More missionaries and traders arrived in the 1830s and halfway through the 19th century, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States all claimed parts of the kingdom of Samoa.

The parts that were claimed by the UK, Germany, and United States were set up as trading posts. Initial relations between the Samoans and the first Europeans, Frenchmen, were sour because the Samoans had been punished for trying to steal from the French ships. When the British arrived the Samoans were still bitter over the prior relations providing them with a hostile stigma. However, when the peaceful missionaries arrived they were treated with more docile behavior.

French were actually 2nd Europeans in Samoa led by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. Dutch Roggeveen was first but did not really have any contact with the islanders.

Brief but detailed history of the missionary endeavors in oceania specifically the Samoan islands.

Pretty good article about the process of Samoans' movement to Hawaii and the mainland U.S. Focuses on the transformation of their culture, extended family, their chief and title system, and visiting patterns.

Overview of the culture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoan_language Language

According to the Ethnologue, there are 6 total living languages in American Samoa, and there are 2 living languages in Samoa.

Here's a list of the languages in Oceania. There's a link to each individual language and something about it.

I have more written down but just a few bullets opposing language's effect on thought:
- conciousness regardless of language
- colors
- language limiting thought
- America be different if English wasn't native?
- Language evolution/Intelligence
- Accuracy of language

One of the first sites that came up on google, but a more thorough, more easily understandable explanation of the hypothesis. It's valuable because it provides citations supporting the hypothesis and other information directly from Sapir and Whorf