During her tenure, she served largely a ceremonial role at her residence on Ta'ū where she received British writer Robert Louis Stevenson.

The decision was not accepted initially by the main line of the Tui Manu'a, but Taofi conceded to Matelita and she became the new paramount chief of the group, ascending to the title on 1 July 1891.

Contemporary and posthumous European and American accounts of her life portray her as a mere figurehead and as a white queen of the South Seas.

[9][10] Robert Louis Stevenson, a British writer and expatriate in Samoa, visited Matelita and the islands of the Manu'a group in 1894 aboard HMS Curacoa (1878).

In a later letter written to Henry James, Stevenson stated:[11] The three islands of Manu'a are independent, and are ruled over by a little slip of a half-caste girl about twenty, who sits all day in a pink gown, in a little white European house with about a quarter of an acre of roses in front of it, looking at the palm-trees on the village street, and listening to the surf.

[1][2][12] Later sources claimed she died after a kerosene lamp overturned causing her mosquito net to catch fire while she slept.

[15] After Elisala's death, the title was abolished by the United States, which had earlier incorporated the islands as a part of American Samoa.

The 6–7 ft (1.8–2.1 m) tombstone, which is the most visible monument in the royal burial ground that is delineated by a stone enclosure, consisted of a round column on a square base.