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328 | Migrations in the Pacific Ocean. 
given to their son and heir who suceeded them. This fable is evidently 
derived from the Nukuhivan story that the children of Oataia were 
named after the various plants which he brought with him from Vavau. 
Thus we have, in the commencement of the Hawaiian history, a sin- 
gular mixture of Marquesan and Tahitian traditions. ‘The twenty sec- 
ond king was Atalana, being the name of the god who supports the isl- 
and of Savaii. He had four children, all of whom were named Maui, 
with some epithet appropriated, in other groups, to a deity. The 
youngest, Maui-atalana, succeeded him, and to him are attributed the 
same deeds that the Tahitians relate of their great deity Maui,—an- 
ottier name or manifestation of Taaroa. He was succeeded by Nana- 
maoa, from whom the real history of the islands seems to commence. 
_ “The probability is that the Sandwich Islands were first peopled 
by emigrants from the Marquesans, of the mixed race which is there 
found. When, after a time, the inhabitants had become numerous, and 
some family was raised to supreme power, it became an object to trace 
the pedigree of the sovereign as far back as possible. After ascending 
as far back as their recollections would carry them—perhaps to one of 
the. first settlers—till they reached an ancestor whose paternity was 
unknown, they made him, according to the usual fashion in such cases, 
the son of a god, Maui. This god was represented as the son of an- 
other deity, Atalana, and not satisfied with this, they added on as many 
names as they could recollect of the genealogy of the Marquesan kings, 
mixed with Tahitian deities and personified qualities. Thus the first 
name is, as above stated, the Nukuhivan Watea; the fourth is Hina- 
nalo, a word which means desire in all the dialects except the Hawaiian ; 
the tenth is Manatu, which means memory in the Samoan and Tongan 
languages ; the eleventh is Tahito or ancient; the twelfth and thir- 
teenth are Luanuu and Tii, two of the principal deities of Tahiti, be- 
longing to the class which they term hanaw-po, ‘born of night.’ 
Moreover, the wives of. the first five kings are said not to have been 
different persons, ‘ but only different names of Papa, as her soul inhab- 
ited sundry bodies by transmigration,’ which sufficiently shows that this 
part of the genealogy was looked upon as merely mythological. 
“If this opinion be thought correct, it will be necessary to deduct 
twenty two generations from the list, (one of the twenty three kings 
having been a brother of the preceding,) which will leave for the 
whole number forty five. Multiplying this by thirty, we have thirteen 
hundred and fifty years from the commencement of the Hawaiian re- 
cords, (and perhaps from the settlement of the country, though that is 
uncertain,) to the succession of Tamehameha; or reckoning to the 
present date, about fourteen centuries.” 
