Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/49

Rh table of Rarotonga ancestors at the end of this work, but very far back in time, which bears out what has been said to the effect that the names given on this particular Rarotongan line (Iro's) are misplaced.

Continuing down this same line from Tu-tarangi, at thirty-eight generations ago, will be found the name of Kati-ongia, which is one of the very few that can be placed in Samoan genealogies. According to Mr. Steubel, there was an ancestor of Samoa of the name of 'Ati-ongie (which, allowing for the difference of dialects, is exactly the same as Kati-ongia), who flourished, by one line, twenty-five, by another thirty, generations ago. These differences are too great to allow of the persons named being the same, though one may have been named after the other. The father's and son's names are also different: but they both lived in Samoa.

Again continuing our downward scrutiny of the Tutarangi line, at thirty six generations ago, we find the name of Atonga, who lived in Kuporu (Upolu), and in his time was built the celebrated canoe named Manu-ka-tere, which I shall have to refer to as being known to the Tahitians. In the times of Atonga also lived some of the Rata family known to Maori history. Here we have an independent check on the period of Atonga, for a reference to the "Journal of the Polynesian Society" (vol. iv., p. 129) will show that Rata-vare (known also by that name to the Maoris), who "owned the forest in which the canoe was made," lived eleven generations before Tangiia, or thirty-five generations ago, which differs only one generation from the period assigned to his contemporary Atonga, on the line we are considering. The best Maori genealogy I have from Rata makes him to have flourished thirty-one generations ago, but I feel sure there have been several people of the