A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

Remembering what Sir Maui Pomare had said about the old religion and the new, I was anxious to see that church. Mana took me there and showed me the big structure of coral and lime with two separate paths leading like low causeways up to the door. He pointed and said, “That path is for the men.” I looked again. Two fourteen-foot stone phallic pillars were planted on either side of it, and on top of each was a roughly hewn stone hat. The other path was for the women; across it was a heavy stone arch, Ina’s phallic sign. Strange wedding of paganism and Christianity.

Inside the church, the altar rail was set with hand-carved panels of hardwood; there were thirteen panels, and each was studded with a silver disk. Looking closer, I saw what they were—old Chilean trade dollars. Figures of the sun and moon were painted on the ceiling, symbols of the procreative divinities, Tangaloa and Ina. I have mentioned the priapic images, male and female, which I saw in Tonga. But here, in the sanctity of a puritanical church....

Mana, son of Tamuero, explained. The first missionaries who came to Mauke did much prosperous trading. Their store paid Chilean trade dollars for copra, then got them back when the natives bought axes and calico. The Maoris saw how the good men cherished the silver tokens. So when the natives built the edifice out of respect for the missionaries, they finished the chancel reverently—and into the panels they set the dollars, each one an image of what they considered the white man’s God.

The pillars and the arch outside had their own story. The three kings were converted and the people followed en masse, as Polynesians will. The leader of the kings studied his Gospel devoutly. But in the back of his head he wondered what Tangaloa and Ina would think of these doings. Well, it was safe to drop an anchor to windward. So he set up the pillars for the men to touch when they went in to church, and the arch for the women. Thus they could worship the new God and still give no offense to the old divinities.

And how about the stone hats on top of the pillars? The business missionaries gave English straw hats to the three kings with the understanding that hats were something like crowns; only kings and Englishmen could wear them. King Tamuero, the most enterprising of the three, decided that he might offend Tangaloa by wearing a royal headdress when the god had none. Therefore he wove two coco-fiber hats in imitation of his own and set them on top of the twin pillars. So the god was again appeased. It took a generation or so for the missionaries to realize what the strange stones outside the church really stood for, then they were so shocked and grieved that they ordered them torn down. A common-sense New Zealand government was in control by that time and protected the Maori’s right to do as he pleased with a church he himself had built. Tangaloa’s two straw hats had worn out after a while, and admiring natives had replaced them with permanent stone ones. I hope they are still there.

It would require a Homer to recite the endless myths of Tangaloa and Ina. Like the Greek Apollo, Tangaloa could walk the earth as a man or ride the heavens as a god. He had two wives. One controlled the sun, and since Tangaloa was the sun, she darkened the land to wintry gray when she took him on pleasure trips. His more illustrious wife, Ina, had a father named Rangomatane, the Club.

This information, and a great deal more, came from Mana, who was at first extremely reticent. It wasn’t cricket for a Christian Maori to talk too much about things which, in his heart, he believed. When I journeyed to Atiu, second largest island in the group and magnificently walled with coral cliffs, Mana referred me to a man named Maka, who would know more. The aristocratic young Maka served as sergeant of police for the District Agent, and was heir to the chieftainship. He was outwardly so missionized that it was hard to make him talk—at first. But Maka was too much of a goodfellow Maori to offend me with secrecy, and he was renowned for knowledge of the old ways. One afternoon he led me down among the coral walls on the beach and showed me two curious niches cut in the formation. Deep inside these recesses were the Tangaloa and the Ina symbols, sculptured with anatomic realism. On this island, and others, I saw women bowing to upright stones, offering up prayers for fertility.

Maka told me more of the myth than I could translate and put down in that short visit. Tanga-loa meant Man Everlasting. His first-born son was called The Beginning. Tangaloa gave fishing tackle to this god-boy and bade him cast his line into outer darkness. The lad gave a mighty tug, and when the Cook Islands came to the surface he cried, “Father, I have brought up the land!” In another aspect Tangaloa was called Maui (He Baited the Hook). The first name he gave the Cooks was Nukatea (Fruit of the Land), but he changed it to Tepapa (Firm Rock) for this reason: proud Tangaloa bade the land to come to him, but it defied him saying, “I am the firm rock.” Then the angered god seized hold of Ina’s father, The Club, and beat the land until it split open and his second son, god of southern winds, came forth. Tangaloa had seven sons with mighty names like The Shelter, The King of Peace and The King of Heaven.

The aristocrats of Mauke and Atiu claimed divine ancestry. Ina loved best her youngest son, Ariki, and for ages the islanders favored him. Maka knew that his heavenly ancestor was Rangomatane, the Club, and spoke of him as you would of a distinguished grandfather. The lordly sergeant of police took me up to the flat ground and showed me an interesting relic of the old cult, ruins of Tangaloa’s Worship House, two long stone walls some half-mile apart, one side shorter than the other. And here had been the sacred marai called Arangirea, or Heaven, where the people gathered, calling out the names of the heavenly sons, and of Tangaloa, and of Ina. They sacrificed pigs, and cried, “Tangaloa, Everlasting, Everlasting!” When the great priapic sign was raised the women danced the hura, sacred to the god.

One point in his long story confused me, and I wanted to know who was the mother of all Tangaloa’s sons. He looked self-conscious, and I knew I was treading on delicate ground. I had touched the family skeleton, for Maka was descended from Rangomatane, the Club, therefore Ina was his ancestress. Once upon a time Tangaloa was so insistent in his husbandly demands that Ina descended from the moon on a banyan tree; look at the full moon and you will see the shadowed banyan. Ina fled in vain, for Tangaloa followed her, and seven sacred sons were the result. Maka told me earnestly that he only revealed the scandal in the interest of truth, and it was nothing to be proud of. By many signs, he said, you knew when Ina was near. White clouds were her tapa, and when they grew red it was her father’s signal, “Come to earth.” Thunder and lightning meant that she had obeyed and her divine feet had touched the ground. The rain was her tears, the emerging sun meant that she was drying her clothes.