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Updated: May 9, 2025
Some said he had a church there, where he worshipped Tiapolo, and Tiapolo appeared to him; others swore that there was no sorcery at all, that he performed his miracles by the power of prayer, and the church was no church, but a prison, in which he had confined a dangerous aitu. Namu had been in the bush with him once, and returned glorifying God for these wonders.
The same night we were waked by sounds of terror in the henhouse. Paul, Louis, and I ran out with one accord, but could see nothing. In the morning we found the body of a pullet with its heart torn out. Simile says that the murderer is a certain small and beautiful bird, but we were quite in the mood to believe it an aitu."
I tell you the truth: I had made up my mind to see an aitu; and if the thing had looked like a pig or a woman, it wouldn't have given me the same turn. The trouble was that it seemed kind of square, and the idea of a square thing that was alive and sang knocked me sick and silly. I must have stood quite a while; and I made pretty certain it was right out of the same tree that the singing came.
Not that they did so with unnecessary cruelty, but ex-Lieutenant Schwartzkoff, the foreman, was looking on, and then, besides that, this big-boned, light-skinned man was a foreigner, and a Samoan hates a foreigner of his own colour if he is poor and friendless. And then he was an aitu a devil, and could speak neither Samoan, nor Fijian, nor Tokelau, nor yet any English or German.
If he looked at a cocoa-nut tree it died, and if he glanced at a bread-fruit tree it also withered away. Aitu langi was the name of a village god in another place, and supposed to be incarnate in the owl. If, when going to fight, an owl flew before, it was a good sign; but if across the road or backwards they returned immediately. ALII TU, or The God who stands.
Called also Aitu iti, or small gods, from the household gods then worshipped, and who were specially implored to bless the family for the year "with strength to overcome in quarrels and in battle." This month was called Lo, from the name of a small fish which comes in plentiful shoals at that time.
The god was supposed to avenge the insult by taking up his abode in that person's body, and causing to generate there the very thing which he had eaten, until it produced death. This class of genii, or tutelary deities, they called aitu fale, or gods of the house.
This statement has been corroborated by Mr. Williams, who calls the reef attached; coloured red. AITU, or Wateeo; a moderately elevated hilly island, like the others of this group. The reef is described in Cook's "Voyage," as attached to the shore, and about one hundred yards wide; coloured red. As it is so near Atiu, it has been unavoidably coloured red. RAROTONGA; Mr.
All this time, and all the time I was following home, I kept repeating that native word, which I remembered by "Polly, put the kettle on and make us all some tea," tea-a-pollo. "Uma," says I, when I got back, "what does Tiapolo mean?" "Devil," says she. "I thought aitu was the word for that," I said. "Aitu 'nother kind of devil," said she; "stop bush, eat Kanaka.
I have collected and arranged alphabetically in the two following chapters the names of the principal gods formerly worshipped in Samoa. The notices of each will explain more fully the religion of the people, and especially that system of zoolatry which so extensively prevailed. AITU LANGI, or Gods of heaven.
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