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but, however this may be, Teu was born about 1720, and married first Tetupaiai Hauiri, of the head-chiefs of Raiatea. This was another step upward in the social scale. Raiatea and Rorabora, which belong to the group of high islands about one hundred and thirty miles northwest of Tahiti, had head-chiefs of their own, who wore the Maro-ura in their own Marae, and had their great Mouas, Tahuas, and Outus which took rank with, or above, the oldest of Tahiti. In the hierarchy of the Tahitian society, Tetupaia gave to her descendants the claim to wear the Maro-ura in Raiatea.
The son of Tetupaia and Teu had not only the right to a seat in the great Marae of Taputapuatea in Raiatea, but he could take his stone from Taputapuatea and set it up in his own district of Pare Arue, so founding a Marae Taputapuatea of his own to wear the Maro-ura in. This he did. Some of Vancouver’s officers at Matavai, in 1792, “embarked in a canoe belonging to Mowree, the sovereign of Ulietea [Raiatea], who, together with Whytooa [Vaetua] and his wife, accompanied them [from Matavaij toward Oparre [Pare]. On their way they landed for the purpose of seeing the Morai of Tapootapootatea.” This must have been at or near Tarahoi, and Tu wore the Maro-ura there in his right ot descent from Raiatea before he was ever permitted to wear it at Maraetaata.
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Indigenous Histories |  |
© Derived from the revised Paris edition of 1901 page 86, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-marua-086.html