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Updated: June 14, 2025
A lady called Ui, and her brother Luamaa, fled from Papatea and reached Manu'a, but alas! the sun there too was demanding his daily victims. It went the round of the houses, and when all had given up one of their number it was again the turn of the first house to supply an offering. The body was laid out on a Pandanus tree, and there the sun devoured it.
The king of Fiji heard of it, went and made up matters with his cast-off wife, as he much wished the yams, which were scarce at the time, and hence the proverb: "Do you call them friends who are but friendly to the yam?" The king named the fertile spot Fitiuta, and when Taeotangaloa returned to Manu'a he changed the name of the village from Anga'e to Fitiuta.
As the story runs, the rocks and the earth married, and had a child, which, when born, was covered with wounds; and hence the name of the said small group of three islands. The story of Lu figures here again. He had a son who was named Moa, after his preserve fowls, and this Moa became king of Manu'a.
Now for the Samoan story. I owe it to the kindness of Dr. F. Otto Sierich, whose collection of folk-tales I expect with a high degree of interest. A man in Manu'a was married to two wives and had no issue. He went to Savaii, married there a third, and was more fortunate.
He could not count the number killed, but supposed them to be Mano, or ten thousand, and hence the name of the island Manono. It broke away from Fiji, and was brought sailing along the ocean to Samoa by the chief Nono, who came to seek a suitable place for carrying on war. He first went to Manu'a, but did not like it.
He subdued all the leeward islands of the group, reached Manu'a, and there he dwelt. All Samoa took tribute to him, and hence the place was called the Great Manu'a. Its principal village is also called Taū.
'What have you in the canoe that I should smell carrion? 'It is nothing in the canoe, said the spirit. 'It is the land- wind blowing down the mountains, where some beast lies dead. It appears it was still night when they reached Manu'a the swiftest passage on record and as they entered the reef the bale-fires burned in the village.
From that time fowls were no longer called Moa on Manu'a, but Manu lele, or winged creatures, out of respect to the name of the king. Fitiaumua, or Fiji the foremost, is also mixed up with Manu'a history. He was said to have come from the east, was a great warrior, conquered at Fiji, and in his lust for conquest came to Samoa.
The following is a specimen story of a piscatorial fight: A shark which had its habitat in a cave on the south side of Savaii mustered all the fish in the neighbourhood to go and fight with the great red fish of Manu'a. The Manu'a fish with their red leader met them in the ocean between Tutuila and Manu'a. They fought. The Savaii fish were beaten, and fled pursued by their conquerors.
If the king of Atua was on a journey, and carried along shoulder high, as soon as he reached this village he had to get down and walk, as a mark of respect to the chivalrous villagers. Faleulu, or Housed-by-the-bread-fruit-tree, was so named from a party who came from Fiji by way of Manu'a and Tutuila, and who, on reaching Upolu, were benighted there and slept under a bread-fruit tree.
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