Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/130

118 Thompson says, about the latter half of the fourteenth century).

The late Judge Te Pou-o-te-rangi of Rarotonga told me in 1897, that previous to a visit he had made to Tonga and Samoa a few years previously, the late Te Ariki-taraare last high priest of Rarotonga, told him that the Haamonga Trilithon was built in the times of Makea Karika (of Samoa and Rarotonga), or circa 1250, and that the latter had had a hand in the work.

These various statements are too conflicting to be reconciled, and the probability is that we shall never know the origin of this structure, any more than that at Stonehenge.

The Rarotonga histories say that, in consequence of the wars originated by Kuru, Taa-kura and Ari, the people spread out (from Fiji) to all the islands—to Avaiki-runga (Eastern Polynesia), Iti-nui (Great Fiji) Iti-rai (Large Fiji), Iti-anaunau, Iti-takai-kere, Tonga-nui (or Tonga-tapu), Tonga-ake (probably East Tonga), Tonga-piritia, Tongamanga, Tonga-raro (Leeward Tonga, perhaps Eua Island), Tonga-anue, Avaiki-raro (Savāi'i), Kuporu (Upolu), Manuka (Manu'a), Vavau, Niua-pou, (Niua-fou), Niua-taputapu (Keppel's Island), &c. Many of these Tonga islands cannot be recognised under the names here given, but they are most likely Rarotongan names for the several islands around Haapai and between there and Tonga-tapu.

It was during this period, when the people occupied the Fiji Group, and were spreading gradually to Samoa and Tonga, that flourished the Polynesian hero Tinirau, about whom there are quite a number of legends. The Native History of Rarotonga contains one version of this series, and from it we learn that Tinirau lived in Iti-takai-kere, one of the Fiji Islands, but which cannot now be determined. Here he married Tu-kai-tamanu's daughter Te Mumu-ikurangi. After a time, Tinirau removed to Upolu,