222 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
the mother^ the wife^ the sister^ or the daughter^ might 
be brought into, it was never relaxed. The men, 
especially those who occasionally attended on the ser¬ 
vices of idol worship in the temple, were considered 
ra^ or sacred j while the female sex, altogether, was con¬ 
sidered noa^ or common: the men were allowed to eat 
the flesh of the pig, and of fowls, and a variety of fish, 
cocoa-nuts, and plantains, and whatever was presented 
as an offering to the gods, which the females, on pain 
of death, were forbidden to touch; as it was supposed, 
they would pollute them. The fires at which the men^s 
food was cooked, were also sacred, and were forbidden to 
be used by the females. The baskets in which their pro¬ 
vision was kept, and the house in which the men ate, were 
also sacred, and prohibited to the females under the same 
cruel penalty. Hence the inferior food, both for wives, 
daughters, &c. was cooked at separate fires, deposited 
in distinct baskets, and eaten in lonely solitude by the 
females, in little huts erected for the purpose. 
The most offensive and frequent imprecations which 
the men were accustomed to use towards each other, 
referred also to this degraded condition of the females. 
^ taha miti noa oe no to medua^ Mayest thou become a 
bottle, to hold salt water for thy mother \ or another, 
Mayest thou be baked as food for thy mother; were im¬ 
precations they were accustomed to denounce upon each 
other: or. Take out your eye-ball, and give it to your 
mother to eat. 
To this cheerless and debasing distinction, the 
female sex had been for ages subject, from the direct 
injunctions of their false system of religion ; and as its 
cumbrous fabric began to give way, this barbarous and 
arbitrary requisition was proportionably disregarded. 
