Creation of Man out of Clay 155 



after he had formed the world he created man out of red earth, which 

 was also the food of mankind until bread-fruit was produced. Further, 

 some say that one day Taaroa called for the man by name, and when he 

 came he made him fall asleep. As he slept, the creator took out one 

 of his bones (ivi) and made a woman of it, whom he gave to the man 

 to be his wife, and the pair became the progenitors of mankind. This 

 narrative was taken down from the lips of the natives in the early 

 years of the mission to Tahiti. The missionary who records it observes : 

 "This always appeared to me a mere recital of the Mosaic account of 

 creation, which they had heard from some European, and I never 

 placed any reliance on it, although they have repeatedly told me it 

 was a tradition among them before any foreigner arrived. Some have 

 also stated that the woman's name was Ivi, which would be by them 

 pronounced as if written Eve. Ivi is an aboriginal word, and not 

 only signifies a bone, but also a widow, and a victim slain in war. 

 Notwithstanding the assertion of the natives, I am disposed to think 

 that Ivi, or Eve, is the only aboriginal part of the story, as far as it 

 respects the mother of the human race 1 ." However, the same tradi- 

 tion has been recorded in other parts of Polynesia besides Tahiti. 

 Thus the natives of Fakaofo or Bowditch Island say that the first 

 man was produced out of a stone. After a time he bethought him of 

 making a woman. So he gathered earth and moulded the figure of a 

 woman out of it, and having done so he took a rib out of his left side 

 and thrust it into the earthen figure, which thereupon started up a live 

 woman. He called her Ivi (Eevee) or " rib " and took her to wife, and 

 the whole human race sprang from this pair 2 . The Maoris also are 

 reported to believe that the first woman was made out of the first 

 man's ribs 3 . This wide diffusion of the story in Polynesia raises a 

 doubt whether it is merely, as Ellis thought, a repetition of the 

 Biblical narrative learned from Europeans. In Nui, or Netherland 

 Island, it was the god Aulialia who made earthen models of a man 

 and woman, raised them up, and made them live. He called the man 

 Tepapa and the woman Tetata 4 . 



In the Pelew Islands they say that a brother and sister made 

 men out of clay kneaded with the blood of various animals, and 

 that the characters of these first men and of their descendants 

 were determined by the characters of the animals whose blood 

 had been kneaded with the primordial clay ; for instance, men who 

 have rat's blood in them are thieves, men who have serpent's blood 



1 W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, Second Edition (London, 1832), i. 110 sq. Ivi 

 or iwi is the regular word for " bone" in the various Polynesian languages. See E. Tregear, 

 The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (Wellington, New Zealand, 1891), p. 109. 



2 G. Turner, Samoa (London, 1884), pp. 267 sq. 



3 J. L. Nicholas, Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand (London, 1817.), i. 59, who 

 writes "and to add still more to this strange coincidence, the general term for bone is Hevee." 



4 G. Turner, Samoa, pp. 300 sq. 



