After giving these instructions to his daughter, Tetohu bade her farewell and started for Marae Raianaunau, where he arrived the same evening, and found the bodies of his sons on the Marae, tied together and covered with a cloth of tapa. He uncovered and separated them, and then lay down between them, with their heads on his arms, and there he lay till, in the morning, the Tahua or priest, coming to the Marae to prepare the sacrifice, was surprised to see six legs instead of four under the tapa covering. Lifting it, he saw Tetohu, and was so deeply touched by his mournful face, with the dead sons lying in his arms, that he had not the heart to call the alarm, which must be the signal for the death of the father. “Get up and fly while there is yet time,” he said to Tetohu. “Do you not know that it is death to interfere with Niuhi’s vengeance and mount his Marae of Raianaunau?” Tetohu answered: “I have come to follow the fate of my sons, sure that my revenge is close at hand.” The Tahua had then no choice for his own life but to report the event to Niuhi, who instantly ordered Tetohu to be killed.

The daughter waited till the third day passed without her father’s return, and then, knowing he was dead, she hurried to Hitiaa. Throwing herself before Teriimana or Temana, she said: “I have come to ask you to revenge the death of my father and brothers.” “Against whom?” asked Temana. “Against Niuhi, Arii of Pare.” Temana asked for what reason they had been killed. “That is a mystery,” she replied.

This habit, that any one with a grievance could appeal before another Arii, made public law in Tahiti. Ariis rarely refused to take up such a quarrel, and sometimes, as I shall have occasion to show from our own family, risked their whole fortune to do it. Temana replied to Terero by the usual formula, bidding her go home, he would attend to her complaint. She then repeated to him her father’s message, which he heard with close attention and instantly obeyed. Calling out his followers, he prepared at once to start, and on arriving at Nuurua in

Indigenous Histories