Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 9 (Oceanic).djvu/73

Rh the heavens alone were inhabited, and the earth covered over with water. Tangaloa, the great Polynesian Jupiter, then sent down his daughter in the form of a bird called the turi (a snipe), to search for a resting-place. After flying about for a long time, she found a rock partially above the surface of the water Turi went up and told her father that she had found but one spot on which she could rest. Tangaloa sent her down again to visit the place. She went to and fro repeatedly, and every time she went up reported that the dry surface was extending on all sides. He then sent her down with some earth and a creeping plant, as all was barren rock. She continued to visit the earth and return to the skies. Next visit, the plant was spreading. Next time, it was withered and decomposing. Next visit, it swarmed with worms. And the next time, the worms had become men and women!"

It should be noted that, according to one of these versions, when man was first made or evolved from the worms, he was "formless," the meaning apparently being that he did not yet have human shape. Outside of Samoa this myth does not occur in just this form, but in Tonga we find a tale describing the origin of man from worms scratched out of the sand by the sandpiper and left to rot in the sun. It was this bird which was the daughter of Taaroa in the Samoan myths, and which, in one version, brought to Taaroa the worms developed from the rotting vines that he might make them into man. Elsewhere in Polynesia we find little trace of this story, unless the fact that in the Society Group the first men were said to have been originally like a ball, their legs and arms being afterward pulled out, may be taken as comparable to the Samoan idea of an originally formless being. We shall see later that this conception of an amorphous being, afterward becoming human in shape, was also characteristic in parts of Indonesia and Australia.

Reference must be made to one other myth of the origin of mankind which, like the last, is confined to narrow limits,