Before the mourning ceremonies were fully over the crisis began. For several days rumors came to the missionaries that Tu and his only remaining ally, Manne-manne, were sacrificing human victims, always the sign of some great emergency. Then the missionaries were told, on the night of November 16, that Tu was coming at daylight to attack the district. The trouble was caused by the funeral ceremony of Temarii. Pomare’s orator or spokesman at Matavai, expressing the old hostility of Purionuu to Teva, sharpened by Temarii’s notorious enmity, had said that Tu should not bring the body of Temarii to Matavai to be mourned, but should throw it into the sea. This was only the pretence for war. The true reason was that, after the death of Temarii, Tu and Manne-manne were obliged either to drive Pomare out of the island or submit to him. They had lost their support, and Pomare was too dangerous an intriguer for them to trust. Meanwhile Pomare had fled to the Paumotus, leaving Iddeah, his wife, to face the storm.

"Pomere’s orator, who is a priest and also a rateera, or under-chief in a neighboring subdivision of the district, and who has been peculiarly familiar at brothers Eyre and Jefferson’s, brought part of his property and put it under the care of brother Jefferson; from him we learnt this war would not affect us, it being against the natives of the district. He further told us that, as he and his countrymen were not able to make head against the king, they were constrained to fly for their lives and secrete themselves till the rage of Otoo shall be allayed.... Pomare is at the [Pau]-motoo, ignorant of the transactions of the day. We have more than once had occasion to notice a disunion between Otoo and his father, and a strong attachment between the former and the deceased chief Orepiah. The providential destruction of Orepiah, though it has deprived Otoo of a powerful ally, may have

Indigenous Histories