Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/139

Rh but they are islands apparently in the Western Pacific, which the Rarotongans were in the habit of visiting so late as the thirteenth century. Mareva is probably one of the islands mentioned in the Marquesan traditions as one of the stopping-places on their migration from the west, but which island it is now impossible to say.

The period at which the Hawaiian Islands were first settled as deduced from Fornander's data is the year 650. According to Rarotonga history, this is the exact date at which the voyages under Ui-te-rangiora commenced. The traditions of the two branches of the race therefore confirm one another in a remarkable maimer, for it is shown above that Hawaii was one of the group visited or discovered at this time. It follows from this that the original Hawaiians are a branch of these Maori-Rarotongans.

New Zealand is mentioned in the list of places visited, and the question arises, did any of the visitors remain there? It is now well known that this country had a considerable population before the arrival of the fleet in 1350, who were divided into tribes, the names alone of which are retained, the people having been absorbed to a large extent by the newcomers. But the genealogical tables of these New Zealand tangata whenua (or aborigines) are not all satisfactory, from want of the means of checking; them. Toi-kai-rakau can be shown to have lived, by the mean of a large number of tables, at twenty-eight generations ago, or about 1150. From him, back to the earliest known ancestor of the tangata whenua who lived in this country, the most reliable table gives twelve generations, or forty in all from the year 1850. In other words, they carry us back to the year 850 about, at which time Ti-wakawaka was visited by a voyager named Maku, who came to New Zealand from Mata-ora. This is 200 vears after the period of Ui-te-rangiora, when the epoch of long