POLYNESIA. 21 



At the Navigator Islands two such individuals, father and son, by 

 name, Tamafaingd, had, for many years, down to the period of the 

 first arrival of the missionaries, held the inhabitants in slavish awe, 

 and ruled them at their will, by the dread of their supernatural 

 power. At the Tonga Islands, though it is not known that any 

 person is actually worshipped, as elsewhere, there are two high 

 chiefs, whose official titles are, Tuitonga and Veati, and a woman, 

 called the Tamahd, who are believed to be descended from gods, and 

 are treated with reverence on that account by all, not excepting the 

 king, who regards them as his superiors in rank. In New Zealand 

 the great warrior-chief, Hongi, claimed for himself the title of a god, 

 and was so called by his followers. At the Society Islands Tamatoa, 

 the last heathen king of Raiatea, was worshipped as a divinity. At the 

 Marquesas there are, on every island, several men, who are termed 

 atua, or gods, who receive the same adoration, and are believed to 

 possess the same powers as other deities. In the Sandwich Islands, 

 that the reverence shown to some of the chiefs bordered on religious 

 worship, is evident from a passage in a speech of John li, (formerly a 

 priest, and now one of the best informed of the native orators,) deli- 

 vered in 1841, and published in the Polynesian, for May 1, of that 

 year, in which he gives an account of some of their ancient supersti- 

 tions. He says : " Here is another sort of tabu that I have seen, 

 namely, that relating to high chiefs, and especially to the king. 

 They were called gods by some, because their houses were sacred, 

 and every thing that pertained to their persons." At Depeyster's 

 Group, the westernmost cluster of Polynesia, we were visited by a 

 chief, who announced himself as the atua or god of the islands, and 

 was acknowledged as such by the other natives. 



This singular feature in the religious system of the Polynesians, 

 appearing at so many distant and unconnected points, must have 

 originated in some ancient custom, or some tenet of their primitive 

 creed, coeval, perhaps, with the formation of their present state of 

 society. There is certainly no improbability in the supposition that 

 the lawgiver, whose decrees have come down to us in the form of the 

 tabu system, was a character of this sort, a king, invested by his 

 subjects with the attributes of divinity. It is worthy of remark, that 

 in all the cases in which we know of living men having been thus 

 deified, they were chiefs of high rank, and not ordinary priests 

 (tufuya), or persons performing the sacerdotal functions. 



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