Ruanu; a chief from Raiatea, who, ages ago, sailed in a canoe from that island, and settled at Aitutaki. From him a genealogy is traced. He died at Aitutaki, and was deified as Te atua taitai tere, or the conductor of fleets.
Tanu; with his fan and other appendages; the god of thunder. The natives, when they heard a peal of thunder, were accustomed to say that this god was flying: and produced this sound by the flapping of his wings.
The Rarotongan idols were of a singular character. From their size they might have suited Swift’s nation of Brobdingnagians, for the smallest seems to have been about fifteen feet high. Each was wrought out of a piece of aito, or iron wood, about four inches in diameter, carved with a rude imitation of the human hand at one end, and with an obscene figure at the other; round it were wrapped numerous folds of native cloth, until it measured two or three yards in circumference. Near the wooden image some red feathers were strewn, and a string of small pieces of polished pearl shells was regarded as the manava, or soul of the god.
An idol, somewhat resembling a Chinese joss, was placed in the fore-part of every fishing-canoe; and prior to their departure on a fishing excursion, the boatmen aways presented it with offerings, and invoked it to grant them a successful issue.
A striking scene was that when Papeiha, a converted islander, lifted up his voice against idolatry, for the first time, among the banana-groves of Rarotonga.
The Rarotongans had assembled in great numbers at a marae, or sacred enclosure, for the purpose of making offerings of food to the gods. Many priests, pretending to be inspired, were filling the air with shouts and yells; whilst around them gathered the deluded worshippers, some with one side of their face and body blackened with charcoal; others were painted with stripes of various colours; others figured as warriors, wearing large caps adorned with white cowrie shells and birds’ feathers. Breaking into their midst, Papeiha boldly addressed them on their folly in devoting such large quantities of food to a log of wood which they had carved and decorated and called a god. This challenge was immediately accepted by one of the priests, who springing to his feet, protested that their god was a real god, and a very powerful god, and that they were that day celebrating a very sacred feast.
Papeiha replied that the day was at hand when their folly would be revealed to them by the true God Jehovah, who would make their so-called gods “fuel for the fire.” This strong declaration greatly perplexed the crowd, but they continued to listen attentively while Papeiha commented on the love of God in giving His Son to die for sinners. After he had ceased, the people asked him many questions; among others,—“Where does your God live?” He answered, that Heaven was His dwelling-place, but that both Heaven and Earth were filled with the majesty of His presence. They rejoined, in their inability to conceive of an Invisible but Omnipresent Deity;—“We cannot see Him, but ours are here before our eyes, and, if the earth was full of your God, He would surely be big enough to be seen.” “And,” said another, “why do we not run against Him?” To which Papeiha ingeniously responded:—“That the earth was full of air, but we did not run against it: that we were surrounded by light, but it did not impede our progress.”
Five months later, a priest came to Papeiha and his associate missionary Tiberio, announcing his resolve to burn his idols; and he brought with him his eldest son, a boy of ten years old, to place under their care, lest the gods in their wrath should destroy him. Evidently, in spite of his iconoclastic purpose, the priest still cherished a belief in the power of his wooden deities. Leaving the child with the two teachers, he returned home, and next day at early dawn returned, staggering under the weight of his cumbrous idol. A crowd followed him, shouting at him as a madman, and looking upon him as one pre-doomed to destruction by his own folly; but he held fast to his resolve to embrace the word of Jehovah, and declared that he had no fear of the issue. He threw his idol at the feet of the teachers, one of whom fetched his saw to cut it up; but the crowd, as soon as they saw the instrument applied to the head of the god, were stricken with panic fear, and fled away. As no catastrophe occurred, they gradually returned impelled by curiosity, which is sometimes stronger than fear; and in their presence, amidst profound excitement, the first rejected idol of Rarotonga was committed to the flames.
To convince the people of the absurdity of their apprehensions, the teachers, as soon as the idol was converted into ashes, roasted some bananas upon them, of which they ate, and invited the spectators to partake. None however were brave enough to admit so dangerous a morsel into their mouths, and they waited, open-eyed, for the expected result of the profane audacity of the two teachers. But, like the inhabitants of Melita, “after they had looked a great while and saw no harm come to them, they changed their minds,” and in less than ten days after this event no fewer than fourteen idols were destroyed. Soon afterwards, the chief Tinomana sent for the missionaries, and on their arrival at his mountain-home, informed them that after much deliberation, he had resolved to become a Christian, and to place himself under their direction. He therefore wished to know what was the first step he ought to take. They informed him that he must destroy his maraes and burn his idols; to which he immediately replied, “Come with me and see them destroyed.” On reaching the place he desired some person to take a firebrand and set fire to the temple, the ataraw, or altar, and the unus, or sacred pieces of carved wood by which the marae was decorated. Four huge idols were then deposited at the feet of the teachers, who, having read a portion of the tenth chapter of S. Luke’s Gospel, which was peculiarly appropriate, especially from verse 17 to 20, stripped them of their linen wrappings, which they distributed among the people, and threw them into the flames.
Some of the spectators waxed wroth with the chief, and expressed themselves with great violence, denouncing him as a fool and a madman for burning his gods, and listening to worthless fellows who “were drift-wood from the sea, washed on shore by the waves of the ocean.” The women were specially vehement in their grief, and broke out into the loudest and dolefulest lamentations imaginable. Many of them inflicted deep gashes on their heads with sharp shells and shark’s teeth, and ran wildly to and fro, smeared with the blood which streamed from their wounds, and crying in tones of the deepest melancholy, “Alas, alas, the gods of the madman Tinomana, the gods of the insane chief are given to the flames!” Others, blackened with charcoal, were not less demonstrative.