MUSEUM OF NATURE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32164, 6 December 1969, Page 5

MUSEUM OF NATURE

God Symbol From Tahiti

by the Canterbury *ueeum> A chief purpose of the travelling exhibition of Polynesian artifacts which the Canterbury Museum organised on behalf of the Museums’ Association for the Cook bicentenary is to help us get close to the mind of the Polynesians of 200 years ago.

How can we talk to people who an two centuriea dead, and whoso traditions and beliefs were not put down in writing? We can read and re-read the eye-witness accounts of Cook and his companions in the aplendid Hakluyt Society volumes edited by Professor J. C. Beaglehole, of Wellington. We can also gate, with sympathy and a certain awe, on any object which we know was shaped by those old-time Polynesians. If the creation of that long dead craftsman's hands spoke to the fashioner in those days, perhaps it can speak to Us.

Ritual Sacrifice In today’s illustration we are faced with one of the Strangest relics of Cook's Polynesia, a symbol or vehicle of the Tahitian war-god (Oro) to whom, as Cook records at the marae of Tauta in southwest Tahiti on September 15, 1777, a human victim was offered as a ritual sacrifice. The district ehief of Pare was marshalling an armada to attack the nearby island Of Mo’oroa, and Oro as god of war mutt be propitiated. When Cook arrived, in company with artist John Webber and Surgeon William Anderson, the body of the victim, draped In coconut fronds and tied to a pole, was brought on to the countyard temple (marae). “This man was bloody about the head *ud face (from) having been privately knocked on the head with a stone, tor those who fall a sacrifice to thia barbarous custom are never appraised of their fate till the moment that puts an end to their existence." Cook could not loam, that the victim, had committed any crime but believed that “th«y make choice of such for their sacrifices, or else- common low fellows who stroll about from place to place or Island to island without any visible After the ritual offering of Khate and an eye of the man to the platform altar (ahu) of the god, tbe body was buried for liter exhumation when the skull would be added to the 49 which Cook counted “embedded in the face of tbe altar.” An engraving, after Webber’s third voyage painting, capturea the dramatic scene, with Cook, Webber and Anderson with hats doffed as they approached the altar. While a seated eholr chanted to tbe beat of temple drum* cooks singe the fur off the body of a dbg to be cooked, and added to the earlier cooked offerings of “three pin not yet Kmed, so that they most intolerably and kept us a greater distance titan otherways we need have been.” The sanctity of the marae centred in a stepped stone platform where barkcloth wrapped bundles concealed the image of Oro and " 7,

the high-chiefs breech clout, against a background of human skulls and a host of sacred wooden slabs.

with festoons of sacred red feathers, invoked by the priest, wrapped in bark cloth, and brought- out . . . unseen ... in the sacred ark. Only then could it serve as a medium through which one could approach the god. The cult of Oro originated, shortly before Cook's 1769 arrival, in the island of Ra’iatea, where the mane of Taputapuatea commemorated the birth of this new and all powerful god, from the union of the see-god Ta'arop with the female spirit of the land (Hina-tu-a-uta). Just before Cook's visit the priests of Ra’iatea had come to Tahiti to elevate Oro at the expense of Tane, the previous supreme deity of this island. When Oro finally displaced Tane it proved a hollow victory for Cook’s friend Tu himself how become King Pomare, abandoned his gods on his conversion to Christianity in 1810. Here in 1821 it was identified among Pomare's discarded “idols” by George Bennet of the London Missionary Society and carried home in triumph.— R.S.D.

Cook noted the solemnity with which the bundles were brought in to be placed on the altar carried in a houseshaped ark fitted with long carrier-poles ao that the bearers were not struck by the tapu. He saw the breechclout unwrapped, about 15 feet long, and 15 inches wide, and covered with feathers. Cook was prevented from catching anything but a glimpse of the sacred image of Oro but remembered it from a first voyage visit to Ra’iatea. “This is a thing made of the twisted fibres of the oocamut, shaped something like a large fid, that is roundish with one end much thicker than the other.” To the eighteenth century sailor the fid was a stout, conical wooden pin used in splicing roper

When we look at such an abstract symbol at the simple doll-like emblem exhibited, a clubelmped billet of wood, tightly wrapped in a sinnet vasing we realise that no Polynesian could have regarded it as a likeness or image of his god. Rather was it like a radio set, a medium through which a voice spoke, when the set is made “live.” To produce this state in the god symbol, it was draped

The illustration shows the Tahitian war-god, Oro, In the form of a 2ft billet of wood wrapped in coconut husk sinnet—Auckland Museum loan te the Cook Bicentenary Travelling Exhibition.