140 ETHNOGRAPHY. 



they ate each other." The twenty-second king, Temangai, was de- 

 posed, and obliged to flee abroad. The usurper Teitiou succeeded, 

 but " his reign was short ; he was conquered suddenly." His 

 name, it should be remarked, does not appear in the list, which 

 shows, with several other circumstances, that it is, in fact, a gene- 

 alogy, and not a complete enumeration of all who have held the sove- 

 reign power. The present king, Maputeva, is the fourteenth in a 

 direct line from Koa, who gained the supremacy after the death of 

 Toronga, the son-in-law of Anua, the eighth in descent from Teatu- 

 moana. The son and grandson of Toronga may be omitted, in which 

 case it will appear that twenty-five generations, or seven hundred and 

 fifty years, have elapsed since the arrival of the first colonists. There- 

 fore if we suppose, as all the circumstances indicate, that they came 

 from Rarotonga, they must have left that island about four genera- 

 tions, or one hundred and twenty years, after it was settled. This 

 would account for some of the peculiarities in the dialect of Manga- 

 reva. The only points of any importance in which it differs from the 

 Rarotongan are, first, in the use of raga instead of aya, to form the 

 participial noun, as te ope raga, for te ope aga, the act of finishing; 

 and secondly, in the use of man as a plural prefix. In both of these 

 points it resembles the Tahitian. Now if the Rarotongan emigrants 

 who settled in Mangareva came, as is most probable, from that side 

 of Rarotonga which faces towards the latter group, (i. e., the eastern 

 side,) they were of the Ngati-Tangiia, or Tahitian party, and may, at 

 that time, have preserved some peculiarities of their original tongue 

 which were afterwards lost, in Rarotonga, on a more complete inter- 

 mixture with the Ngati-Karika, or Samoan party. 



In the foregoing traditions, the existence of cannibalism, at a very 

 early period, will be noticed, as also the custom, with conquered 

 chiefs, of betaking themselves to the open sea to escape the ven- 

 geance of their adversaries. It was in this manner that Temoe, or 

 Crescent Island, a coral islet which lies about thirty miles to the 

 southeast of the Gambier Group, was peopled between sixty and 

 seventy years ago. A defeated party, fleeing from Mangareva, were 

 drifted to this island, and remained there, with their descendants, till 

 the arrival of the Catholic missionaries, who, hearing of their situation, 

 sent for them and restored them to their original homes. This well- 

 authenticated fact shows the manner in which most of the South Sea 

 Islands have probably received their first inhabitants. What makes 

 it more valuable, as an illustration, is the circumstance that the 



