Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/228

216 tona tuatau kua tupu te ngaru." "In the time of Uenuku-te-aitu, rose up the waves," which seems to refer to the predicted inundation.

We will now see how the genealogical accounts of Maori and Rarotongan agree as to the period of Ruatapu. On the particular line from which the fragment in the margin has been taken, Ruatapu is the eighteenth back from Queen Makēa now living. But, if we take the mean of a considerable number of lines to fix the date of Tangiia we should find he lived twenty-four generations ago. Counting down from him, we shall find that Ruatapu flourished twenty generations ago. The mean of a large number of Maori genealogies back from 1850 to the date of migration to New Zealand is twenty generations, and it is known that Uenuku and Ruatapu lived in the generation that the heke left Hawaiki. Hence we see the records of the two people agree remarkably well. They are in fact history not myth.

Motoro, mentioned in the marginal genealogy, was sent by his father Tangiia to become high priest of the god Rongo at Mangaia, as mentioned by Dr. Wyatt Gill in "Myths and Songs," and he is mentioned as a Maori ancestor also.

It was about this period of Rarotongan history, that flourished two priests named Paoa-uri and Paoa-tea who voyaged to Ra'iatea to present a big drum called Tangimoana to the god Oro, at Opoa, where they were both killed, the full story of which is known to Tahitians.

The above is perhaps as accordant an account of events in Polynesian History as will ever be obtained. As this book will be read by many who are not familiar with Maori History, it is necessary to say that the migration to New Zealand herein described is by no means the earliest one of which we have records, on the contrary, it was the