Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/163

Rh from central Fiji, and 360 miles south-west from Samoa. In this name Atu-Apai we recognise the Ati-Hapai of Maori story, which, as it is written, means the Hapai people or tribe; but I think this is the common substitution of the i for u, and that the name was originally in Maori, Atu-Hapai, which would mean in most dialects, the Haapai group.

We will now follow out in brief the Rarotonga account of this period, for the final result was an important one. Apakura was the one sister of a family of ten brothers, whose names were Papa-neke, Papa-tu, Papa-noo, Taūū, Tapa-kati, step-brothers, and Oro-keva-uru, the eldest. Apopo-te-akatinatina, Apopo-te-ivi-roa (the Hapopo of Maori story), Tangiia-ua-roro, and Iriau-te-marama, her own brothers, of whom Oro-keva-uru was the ariki or ruling chief of Atu-Apai, Vaea-te-ati-nuku being Apakura's husband. Her son was Tu-ranga-taua, known to Maori history as Tu-whaka-raro.

In their low tree-shaded home of Apai (Haabai, the Tongan form of the name) an island that is nowhere elevated more than twenty-feet above sea level, fierce jealousy sprung up in the heart of the ariki against Apakura's son Tu-ranga-taua, on account of his beauty and skill. The people engaged in the game of teka, or dart throwing, and Tu-ranga-taua's dart far exceeded the flight of the ariki's; and so hate grew up in his heart, and the handsome Tu-ranga-taua was demanded of his mother as a sacrifice to the cannibal lusts of the chief. But she, having in mind the near relationship of her son to the ariki, refused her consent. Then follows, as so often occurs in the Native history, a song, very pretty