This War of the Mutineers of the Bounty, which occurred soon after the schooner was launched, August, 5, 1790, brings Papara again into notice, for this time the chief of Papara joined Tu against Faaa, Paea and Eimeo. The mutineers brought their schooner and their guns, with Tu’s canoes, from Pare round to Paea, and fought a battle which was decided by the death of Mahine, killed by Tu’s brother-in-law, Terii Vaetua. The chiefs of Paea and Ahurai, defeated in battle, unable to face the guns of the mutineers and of Tu’s men; hemmed in on the north by Tu and the mutineers; on the south by Temarii and more Englishmen from Papara, fled at last to the hills and submitted to the conqueror.

This was about September, 1790. Tu’s English arms and English seamen had at last enabled him to effect a part of his ambitious purpose, and to crush Eimeo, Ahurai and Paea; but one of our family reads with astonishment that Papara helped him. Who was, then, the Temarii who ruled at Papara in 1790? To answer this question I shall need a whole chapter by itself. The English, who were conscious, whenever their interest required it, that a chief of Papara still existed, never cared to ask who he was. They had never heard of any chiefs of Papara except Amo, Purea and Teriirere, and in their accounts, whenever a chief of Papara was mentioned, he was invariably translated as Amo, or as Teriirere, the son of Amo and Purea. Yet, beyond doubt, when the war of 1790 occurred, Amo, Purea and Teriirere were all dead. Even the brief notices of Papara, which were called out by the visit of the frigate Pandora, show that a new chief must have ruled at Papara.

The Pandora frigate belongs also to the tale of the mutineers rather than to the history of the island. When Lieutenant Bligh reached home and reported the mutiny, the British government sent the frigate Pandora in search of the Bounty. The Pandora never found the Bounty, which had long since been burned by the mutineers at Pitcairn island; but she did find such of the mutineers as had returned to Tahiti, who were actively engaged in establishing Tu as a Tahitian despot when the Pan-

Indigenous Histories