United States or Niger ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Of the creation of man suffice it to say that he was made by Tiki, who formed him out of red clay, or, as some say, out of clay reddened by his own blood. Woman's origin was more ethereal and poetic; her sire was a noonday sunbeam, her mother a sylvan echo. Many are the legends of the hero, Maui. He lassooed the sun with ropes and beat him till he had to go slower, and so the day grew longer.
The cry for blood and revenge was universal. I must confess that, added to the danger it placed me in, I was much shocked when I heard of the fate of poor Tiki, for he was one of our particular friends, and had passed many an evening in our hut. I had taken leave of him only the day before, when he had set out, full of health and spirits, on this hog expedition, which had terminated thus fatally.
"The captain went to his cabin, and soon he leaped up the stairs, falling over the thing they look at to steer the ship, and there, lying on the deck, he cried again and again that I had done wrong not to tell him earlier. "He held in his hand the tiki, the silver box that Anna had always worn about her neck, that her father had given her.
A tablet on the cross bore the inscription: "1900 Le Christ Dieu Homme Vit Regne Commande Christo Redemptori Jubilé 1901 Atuona." "The tiki of the true god," said Titihuti, observing my gaze, and crossed herself with the fervor of the believer in a new charm. On the roof a score of doves were cooing as we filed into the church.
I handed him back the gruesome relic, though he began advances to make it my property. For the full demijohn he would have parted with the tiki that had been his grandfather's, but I had no fancy for it. One can buy in Paris purses of human skin for not much more than one of alligator hide. "Honi must have been very tough," I said. "He must have been," Haabunai said regretfully.
I swam ashore when he became maddened as a kava drinker who does not eat. The mother of Atuona, whom I told in Tai-o-hae, went to see him, but he did not know her, and she took the tiki from his cabin when she found him praying to it. He was paea, his stomach empty of thought. When the ship left, he was tied with the irons they have for sailors, and the second chief sailed the vessel."
With solemnity he invoked the name of Hoy-lee, the mysterious person who had fixed immutably the tapus of pokaree. He made an occult sign with his thumb against his nose, and that settled it. If any one persisted in challenging this tiki he added his other thumb to the little finger of his first symbol, and said, "Got-am-to-hellee!"
But, oh, horror of horrors! right above the head, with all its hideous fluttering adornments of feathers and tassels, was the horrible, grotesque, and grinning idol! "Chance had led the slayer of Tuwhare to put his head into the self-same tree where the dead ariki had, a short time previously, disposed the tiki. There it now appeared, stuck in a fork, just where he had put it for safety.
A black cross was fixed above these symbols, which Vanquished Often and Exploding Eggs regarded with respect. To the Marquesan these are all tiki, or charms, which have superseded their own. Beside the decaying church stood a refectory far gone in ruin, that once had housed a dozen friars.
Grandfather saved these marks, and wore them as a tiki, or amulet, until he died, when he gave it to me. He had preserved the skin so that it did not spoil." Haabunai yawned and said his mouth was parched from much talking, but when a shell of rum was set before him and he had drunk, he fetched from his house the tiki.
Word Of The Day