The Supreme Deity, one of these two first beings, they call TAROATAIHETOOMOO, and the other, whom they suppose to have been a rock, TEPAPA. A daughter of these was TETTOWMATATAYO, the year, or thirteen months collectively, which they never name but upon this occasion, and she, by the common father, produced the months, and the months, by conjunction with each other, the days: the stars they suppose partly to be the immediate offspring of the first pair, and partly to have increased among themselves; and they have the same notion with respect to the different species of plants. Among other progeny of Taroataihetoomoo and Tepapa, they suppose an inferior race of deities whom they call EATUAS. Two of these Eatuas, they say, at some remote period of time, inhabited the earth, and were the parents of the first man. When this man, their common ancestor, was born, they say that he was round like a ball, but that his mother, with great care, drew out his limbs, and having at length moulded him into his present form, she called him EOTHE, which signifies finished. That being prompted by the universal instinct to propagate his kind, and being able to find no female but his mother, he begot upon her a daughter, and upon the daughter other daughters for several generations, before there was a son; a son, however, being at length born, he, by the assistance of his sisters, peopled the world.

Voyaging Accounts