Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/41

Rh lines to have lived in the same generation, and a mean of six lines from their period down to the present shows that they flourished twenty-five generations ago. One of these men was a noted voyager, who had visited Kahiki (all the world outside Hawaii, but probably here intended for Tahiti and its neighbouring islands), and the other is said to have come from Tahiti and settled in Hawaii. But both appear to have been descendants of people whose ancestors formerly lived in the southern groups. In visiting Tahiti and the neighbouring islands, Pau-makua must, if my theory is right, have come across the ancestors of the Maori. We find that one of the ancestors of Turi, of the Aotea canoe, was named Pau-matua, and—taking Turi to have lived twenty generations ago, or in 1350—that this Pau-matua flourished by one, twenty-three, or by other two accounts, twenty-four generations ago, or very nearly at the same date as the Hawaiian chief. According to Hawaiian history Pau-matua's son was Moena-i-mua (in Maori, Moenga-i-mua) and by Maori history it was Puha-i-mua. These two names are not exactly proof that the Hawaiian and Maori ancestors Pau-matua are the same, but there is a strong probability that they were the same individual.

A constant difficulty met with in the names of Polynesian people is, that they had several, or often changed them from the occurrence of a death or other circumstance. Hence the same ancestor is often known under different names by separate branches of the race, or even by different tribes of the same branch. It was an ancient custom amongst the Polynesians that chiefs visiting strange islands should take a wife from the people of such islands. It was often the case, also, that these wives and their children remained with their own tribe. So that we have lines of people in different islands, descending from one ancestor,