During the next ten or fifteen years the books and printed records contain hardly a mention of the chief of Papara. Even in the great war of 1802, the war about the God Oro, provoked by Pomare, no allusion is made to Papara or its chief. A single allusion to a Temarre occurs in December 1803, but nothing more.

Vairatoa, the first Pomare, died suddenly, Sept. 3, 1803, about sixty years old, and his son Otoo, the second Pomare, went to Eimeo or Moorea, in the middle of 1804, where he remained till 1806. In January of that year he returned, and in June 1807, he committed an act which made the people of Tahiti, and particularly the whole Teva clan, thenceforward deadly and irreconcileable enemies to the Pomares and all their friends and faiths, as well as to missionaries, Christianity and the English interest, until the final catastrophe of 1815. Far later and even down to this day, the memory of Otoo’s treachery and cruelty in 1807 has survived among the people, and perhaps still more among the chiefs.

From day to day the missionaries recorded what they saw or heard, with very little attempt at explanation, and no apparent suspicion that they were in any way parties to the events they deplored:

"Monday. 11 June 1807. The man mentioned as being inspired continues to say that the God Oro is angry and that there must be war. The principal offence, we understand, is that the people of Attahuru have taken some of the bones of the chief Mateha who was killed by them the last war at Taearabu, and made fish-hooks of them, which has been done by way of contempt to the King, as he was a relative to Pomare’s family. There are several other things which have displeased the king. Also the people of Taearabu have given some offence possibly by their not wholly leaving the land given to Oro, which the king had

Indigenous Histories