Chapter VIII
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which the priest who accompanied us assured us were only a small fraction of what had been here sacrificed. This Marai [Tooarai] and apparatus for sacrifice belonged, we were told, to Oborea and Oamo. The greatest pride of an inhabitant of Otaheite is to have a grand Marai; in this particular our friends far exceed any one in the island, and in the Dolphin’s time the first of them exceeded everyone else in riches and respect. The reason of the difference of her present appearance I found by an accident which I now relate. Our road to the Marai lay by the seaside, and everywhere under our feet were numberless human bones, chiefly ribs and vertebrae. So singular a sight surprised me much, and I inquired the reason. I was told that in the month called by them Owaraheu last, which answers to our December, 1768, the people of Tiarreboo made a descent here and killed a large number of people whose bones we now saw; that upon this occasion Oborea and Oamo were obliged to flee for shelter to the mountains; that the conquerors burnt all the houses, which were very large, and took away all the hogs, etc; that the turkey and goose which we had seen [in Taiarapu] were part of the spoils, as were the jaw-bones which we had also seen."
Thanks to Banks’s exactness, we know, then, that the authority of Amo and Purea, or al least their military domination, was broken down by a sudden attack from Tiarapu in December, 1768, eighteen months after Wallis saw Purea in the pride of her queenship, at Matavai Bay. This gives one of the two certain dates in our family history. The destruction of Papara by the Tiarapu people in December, 1768, was the first of a long series of disasters and miseries which ended with the death of our granduncle Opuhara, at the battle of the Fei-pi, November 12, 1815.
Besides this light thrown on our personal affairs, Cook’s first voyage gives another gleam. When Wallis visited the island he found
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Indigenous Histories |  |
© Derived from the revised Paris edition of 1901 page 71, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-marua-071.html