In considering the many versions of this story of Tawhaki as preserved by the Maoris, and more especially in one collected by the late John White, wherein are mentioned the names of Savai'i, Upolu, and Tutuila, and the wars in which Tawhaki engaged there, it has always been my idea that this marvellous ascent into heaven after his father's bones, was in prosaic reality, merely the climbing up a mountain-cliff by means of a rope amongst an alien people, who had killed his father.[1] I would suggest that it was to one of the Fijian islands that Tawhaki went, either when residing in Fiji or in Samoa, and that the atuas and the vaine taae here, are merely the Melanesians, who at this period occupied parts of the group. Taaki, by both Rarotonga and Maori story, was a very handsome man; hence the vaine taae (Melanesian women?) desired him.
In connection with this mountain—if it were such—where the gods lived, reference should be made to Mr. Basil Thompson's account of the first occupation of Fiji by the Melanesians, and his description of Nakauvandra mountain in Viti-levu as the home of Fijian gods, and especially of Ndengei, a name which is supposed to be the Fijian equivalent Tangaroa[2] in whose keeping (see above) were the bones of Taaki's father. Tawhaki, under the form Tafa'i is known to Samoan tradition, and from its surroundings, the story is evidently very ancient. The following is the story as I learnt it from Sapōluo Matautu, near Apia, Mr. Churchill translating.
"The Samoans sprang from two girls, Langi and Langi, These two women were swept away by a great wave of the
- ↑ Miss Teuira Henry tells me the Tahitians have much the same story of Tafa'i (Tawhaki); that he ascended a mountain where dwelt the gods—which mountain the Tahitians have localized at Te Mehani in Raiatea island.
- ↑ Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. i, p. 143.
