Page 6 - Puhipi

was at the time of dispersal and even after the heartland itself has abandoned them

shows that the theology of Rangiatea was carried to the extremities of Polynesia.

An examination of the central areas stories however, shows that there was a change
there after the dispersal. The god Ta’aroa (the Maori god Tangaroa, god of the sea) was
elevated to the primary position hitherto held by Tane the god of life, and a new god
Oro son of Ta’aroa created. Religious wars broke out and the new beliefs were imposed
by force by the priest led people of Rangiatea on the people of Tahiti.

Tahiti eventually became the centre for the new religion. Some who would not have it

and who clung to Tane left the island for the sake of their religious principles and
migrated to the Cook Islands. This is the background to the coming of the Maori to
NewZealand the country they were to call Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud,

the island over which they were to hold undisputed sway for many centuries.

The most widely accepted traditional accounts of the settlement of Aotearoa tell of its
discovery by Kupe, its subsequent settling by Toi and his grandson Whatonga and then
the last migration, often referred to as the fleet, with its named canoes and wealth of
detailed stories. By the study of genealogical tables kept with loving care in the memory
of every Maori of standing in the old days, a date for these events was arrived at by

allowing a period of 25 years for each generation, thus the date of Kupes arrival was
set at 950 AD, that of Toi & Whatonga at 1150 and the fleet at 1350.

Tradition indicates that while Aotearoa was an empty land, or nearly so, for some
accounts speak of evidence of occupation when Kupe came, there were people here

when Toi arrived. They were what the later Maori referred to as Tangata Whenua, the
people of the land. Their stories seem only to be recorded when they came into contact
with the new comers in battle, the Tangata Whenua seem to have always lost their
encounters and so the assumption has been that the new comers were more virile people.

These earlier people were credited with hunting the Moa, the giant flightless bird which
has been extinct since before the time of the arrival of Europeans. So rare were these

birds and so vulnerable to hunters that only smaller species in remote places were known
to Maori, descendants from canoes of the fleet. It is true that mythology credits the
discovery or rather the fishing of Aotearoa from out of the sea to the demi-god Maui.
But Maui is a personage whose exploits are related throughout Polynesia and it seems

more than likely that he lived, for a demi-god is but a man whose exploits have been
added to and magnified over the centuries, before the ancestors of the Maori came to
Aotearoa.

Kupes voyage of discovery was said to have been made in the Matahorua canoe which
was accompanied by the Tawirirangi (or Tahirirangi) canoe under the command of

Ngahue also known as Ngake. The story is that he set out to kill a giant octopus which