All these bits of island custom are told only to show that our Papara family was probably, as the tradition says, a younger branch of the Vaiari family, and junior even to Punaauia. Yet Wallis found the Papara chief politically superior to both the families who wore the Maro-ura, and he had been so for many generations. At some time in the past a revolution had overthrown Vaiari and put Papara in its place, but while Papara took the political headship, it could not take the social superiority, for, as long as society should last, the Marae of Farepua must remain the older and superior over all the Maraes of Papara and the Tevas.

Here again tradition comes in to tell how Papara won the headship, but as usual tradition is indifferent to dates and details, joins together what was far apart, and cares only for what amuses it. As the story is told by the people to each other, the affair must have happened some twenty generations ago, when the head-chief over Vaiari and Mataiea was Huurimaavehi, and Papara was tributary to him. The chief of Papara was called Oro; not the God, to whom genealogies commonly ascend as the origin of human beings, but the chief of the small district of Amo, which I have already mentioned as having the original Marae of Taputuarai. Amo is now a forest of bread-fruit and cocoanut trees, but in those days it must have had a force of several hundred fighting men, and as it stood on the edge of Mataiea, guarding against attack, its chief was a great fighter.

Beautiful women were always a lively interest in the island society, and were beauties by profession. On great occasions they swam in the surf and were admired; before their houses their fathers made a sort of platform or terrace, called paepae, paved with flat stones, where the girl sat, and strangers stopped to look at her and discuss the whiteness

Indigenous Histories