Chapter XV
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I have succeeded in following, after a fashion, the careers of the Papara chiefs until the death of Ariifaataia in September 1798, so that Amo and Purea and even Ariifaataia himself have a kind of reality to me, but as I come to the dark ages of our history, between 1800 and 1815, I find a want of records and traditions that shows how narrowly our family must have escaped the fate of almost every other chiefly race. The successor to Ariifaataia as chief at Papara could not be a descendant of Amo or Purea or Ariifaataia. Their line was extinct. The line of succession had to go back to Amo’s younger brother Manea -- who had washed away Purea’s blood-feud at Mahai-atea, which is all I know about him. He was probably dead in 1798, but, even if alive, he must have been an old man, between seventy and eighty; and in Tahiti old men were not much regarded. He had a son, Teuraiterai, born probably about 1750, who married Tetau i Ravea, and had several children. The oldest son, Taura atua i Patea, afterwards known as Tati, who died in 1854, supposed himself then to be eighty years old. He remembered having seen Cook, when a child, and as Cook’s last voyage was in 1777, the young Taura atua could hardly have been born later than 1774. He had a brother, Opuhara, born probably a year or two later.
When Ariifaataia died in 1798, Taura atua must have been about twenty-four, or twenty-five, years old. He was then unmarried. As far as I know, his relations with Tu were friendly and he succeed
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© Derived from the revised Paris edition of 1901 page 148, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-marua-148.html