POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
39 
them prior to their intercourse with Europeans, it will be 
the most remarkable and valuable oral tradition of the 
origin of the human race yet known. 
Another extensive and popular tradition referred the 
origin of the people to Opoa, in the island of Raiatea, 
where the or spirits, formerly resided, who assumed 
of themselves, or received from the gods, human bodies, 
and became the progenitors of mankind. The name 
of one was Tii Maaraauta ; JVV, branching or extending 
towards the land, or the interior 3 and of the other, Tii 
Maaraatai, Tii^ branching or spreading towards the sea. 
It is supposed that prior to the period of Tii Maaraauta’s 
existence, the islands were only resorted to by the gods 
or spiritual beings, but that these two, endowed with 
powers of procreation, produced the human species. 
They first resided at Opoa, whence they peopled the island 
of Raiatea, and subsequently spread themselves over the 
whole cluster. Others state, that Tii was not a spirit, 
but a human being, the first man made by the gods ; 
that his wife was sometimes called Tii, and sometimes 
Hina ; that when they died, their spirits were supposed 
to survive the dissolution of the body, and were still 
called by the same name, and hence the term tii was 
first applied to the spirits of the departed, a signification 
which it retained till idolatry was abolished. 
In the Ladrone Islands, departed chiefs, or the spirits 
of such, are called aritis^ and to them prayers were ad¬ 
dressed. The tiis of Tahiti were also considered a 
kind of inferior deities, to whom, on several occasions, 
prayers were offered. The resemblance of this term to 
the daemon or dii of the ancients, is singular, and 
might favour the conjecture that both were derived 
from the same source. 
