Chapter II
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but the old and most important Maraes, from which the rest were mostly branches, numbered only about a dozen, and these must always be remembered, for they were the record of rank and the title of property throughout the island. Every one who has read Captain Cook's Voyages or any of the missionary books about Tahiti or Hawaii or the other Polynesian islands, knows that a Marae is a walled enclosure with an altar sacred to some God; but none of the books explain the social importance of the Marae, or that it represents, more than all else, the family. The God was a secondary affair, and even the right to human sacrifices had little to do with the Marae's rank. To natives, the family and the antiquity were alone seriously interesting. An aristocratic society, their religious arrangements were rigorously aristocratic, and a man's social position depended on his having a stone to sit upon within the Marae enclosure. Cook himself was greatly embarrassed when, on his departure from Raiatea in June, 1774, Oreo the chief asked him the name of his Marae. A man who had no Marae could be no chief, and Cook was regarded as a very great chief. His only resource was to give the name of his London parish. Forster, in answer to the same question entirely missed the point:
"Oreo's last request was for me to return; when he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of my Marai (burying-place). As strange a question as this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell him Stepney; the parish in which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could pronounce it; then Stepney Marai no Tote was echoed through an hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put to Mr Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a different and indeed more proper answer by saying no man who used the sea could say where he should be buried".
Vaiari, to begin with, had two very old and famous Maraes. One was called Farepua, and enjoyed the curious distinction of being the only Marae whose decorations were of Ura, or red feathers. The head-chief
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© Derived from the revised Paris edition of 1901 page 15, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-marua-015.html