TAPUTAPUATEA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

TAPUTAPUATEA.

POLYNESIA'S SACRED MARAE. FRENCH NEGLECT. (By EBIC RAMSDEN.) Listen, then, to- the breaking waves. Incline thine ear to the rippling sea, I greet it. 1 cry to it in welcome, To my home tlint I abandoned! Of all the sacred places of the ancient Polynesian none was more tapu than Taputapuatea, the marae near Opoa, on the island of Baiatea. This marae, now deserted and forlorn, instead of being preserved by its new masters, the French, as a monument of outstanding historic importance, was the international marae of all eastern Polynesia. The island of Baiatea, nortli-west of Tahiti, is of special interest to New Zealanders, for it was from there, more than six centuries ago, that the "Aotea" canoe sailed to settle Turi and his people at Taranaki. Opoa is a good many miles from the comparatively new port of Uturoa, at which the Chinese-owned schooner on which I travelled to the Leeward Isles called on her way to Pora Pora. It was with considerable difficulty, therefore, that I was able to see the marae at all. If it had not been for the good offices of the Protestant pastor, the Swiss, M. Charpier, and the courtesy of the Polynesian captain of the Potii-Baiatea, who anchored his vessel in the lagoon and permitted me to transfer from the motor boat of the former, I would never have set foot at Opoa. Under French Control. The marae is still called Taputapuatea. The name occurs quite frequently in Tahiti and other parts of Polynesia. The marae of Makea-nui Ariki Tinirau, who led the Rarotongan delegation to the Waitangi celebrations last year, is also called Taputapuatea. I was also interested to learn from Sir Apirana Ngata quite recently that there is also a Taputapuatea on White Island. Therefore, the Polynesian voyagers of old carried the sacred name with them over thousands of miles of Pacific waste —even to far off Aotearoa. On this marae still stands the famous pillar, to the top of which in former times the "prince or princess of the ura girdle was raised when he or she was proclaimed sovereign."

When in Europe last year Professor Peter H. Buck, then on the staff of the University of Yale, searched the museums of England and the Continent for that same girdle. It was believed it was sent in triumph with other trophies by the early missionaries, to the London Missionary Society's collection. The birdie was composed of feathers from birds long since extinct. As each new sovereign was proclaimed a piece was added to the girdle, and it was worn, folded, in much the way as the Havvaiians were depicted in early drawings. Professor Buck searched, however, in vain. Though he found many hitherto unidentified articles of clothing and weapons from the ancient home of the Maori people there was no sign of the maro ura.

The native people at Raiatea are, of course, under French control. For vears after Tahiti was French the Raiateans maintained their indepeiij dence. Indeed, it was not until ISO* that the French subdued the so-called

"rebels," and exiled some of their leaders to New Caledonia. These islanders wished to be British. A few years earlier the neighbouring island of Huahine, the scene of early British missionary endeavour, had declared itself a republic under the sovereignty of France. There were sporadic .outbreaks until that year, when France definitely imposed her will on thase people.

Baiatea is now of some importance in the French scheme as the administrative centre of the Isles Sous le Vent, and Uturoa, its diminutive capital, is the second largest community in French Oceania. There is, of course, much mixed blood at Kaiatea as elsewhere and there is little to-day to recall the part the island played in the days when Turi and his companions, in fear of their lives, set forth for Aotearoa in the "Aoteautanga nui" —"the richly laden 'Aotea'." "Horrid Piles of Skulls." When the pioneer missionary, the Bev. William Ellis, visited Taputapuatea in 1819, he saw a large enclosure entirely walled in with human heads. But these have- long since been secreted owing to the depredations of tourists. To-day the temple is but a heap of ruins screened by a growth of trees that have taken root. "The horrid piles of skulls." declared the visitor, "in their various stages of decay, exhibited a gliaatly spectacle." Human offerings, he said, were brought from Tahiti and other islands to be placed on the altar of Taputapuatea. In the time of Ellis Baiatea was the customary place of residence of the reigning, family. _ The marae was dedicated to the worship of the god Oro. Miss Teuira Henry (who was a descendant of the missionaries Henry and Orsmond, friends and correspondents of the Rev. Samuel Marsden), lias left on record detailed accounts of the elaborate ritual that was once observed at Taputapuatea. The Raiateans still regard the marae with awe. No native will approach it at night. The penalty for taking a piece of rock or coral from this most sacred of temples is said to be the dreaded leprosy. Nevertheless, I ran the risk and carried away with me a memento of this most historic place in Polynesia, and it is now housed in Mahinarangi, the whare-whakairo of the Waikato peoples at Ngaruawahia. It was interesting to observe the reverent manner in which the Maori people regarded the stone. Marae to them, of course, has quite a different meaning. The old people when speaking of the stone referred to it as having come from the "tuahu" of Taputapuatea. Curiously enough, the ancient name of Raiana was Hawaiki. The Maoris always refer to their old home in Polynesia as Hawaiki.

Not far from the ruins is the village of Opoa. Insignificant to-day, Opoa was a place of considerable importance in Ellis' time. He declared it to be th-j "most remarkable place in Raiatea." Nowadays, however, Uturoa, as the centre of administration and commerce, attracts more visitors. The chief and local dignitaries met us at the wharf. Incidentally, it was interesting to note that the French colonial administration does not always select the chief because of his birtn. Therefore the veneration for rank which we still see in New Zealand among the Maori tribes, has practically disappeared in most of the islands in French Oceania. The change vn centuries-old custom has been a blow at the very foundation of the Polynesian social structure. I think we have been wiser to preserve the hereditary chieftainship from rangatira stock.

Spaniard's Sacred Bowl. In the national ethnological collection in Madrid is umete (or, as the Maoris would say, kumete), which the Spaniard Maximo Rodriguez secured from Taputapuatea, in Tahiti, arid sent to his patron, the Viceroy of Peru, in 1774. The bowl, which was made of "a block of hard, fine-grained black dplerite," is said to have come from Maupiti, an island near Pora Pora. For years it remained unknown and unidentified in Madrid until a British investigator recognised it as the gift of the interpreter, Rodriguez.

Another bowl of this kind was seen by Banks and Solander at Opoa, near the Taputapuatea marae, in 1709. Strangely enough, the Bounty mutineers found "a large stone bowl" during the early, days of their occupation of Pitcairn Island. James Norman Hall, coauthor with Charles B. Nordhoff of the recent Bounty trilogy of "Mutiny," "Men Against the Sea" and "Pitcairn's Island," found a beautifully modelled stone arize during, a recent visit to the same Wand —additional evidence of the extraor<l.i»rry voyages undertaken by the Polynesians of old.

The preservation of. the Rarotongan Taputapuatea and other maraes on that island is a tribute to British administration. The Commissioner (Judge Ayson) informed me that ,in time he hoped they would be made national trusts. Something of the kind should be done with the greatest Taputapuatea of them all. On Raiatea, as elsewhere, the French have done little or nothing to preserve these memorials, of the past. On the island of Tahiti maraes have been dismantled and the stones actually used for bridge-building and road-making purposes.

Consequently, the natives of French Oceania to-day take little or no interest in these sacred places—except to regard them with superstitious fear.