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Updated: May 13, 2025
Ori-a-Ori every evening sat with me, and numbers of times we read the Bible, I, first, reciting the verse in French, and he following in Tahitian.
The people of Tautira, from Ori-a-Ori to Matatini, had the fullest confidence that Tufetufetu had shown them a miracle, and that it was not evil; but to the American and European missionaries the Umuti was deviltry, the magic of Simon Magus and his successors, This was shown clearly in the statement of Deacon Taumihau of Raiatea, which I give in Tahitian and English: E parau teie te umu a Tupua.
Ori-a-Ori had known them all, his mother, his wife, and his loved stepson, Lloyd Osborne. Nine weeks they had stayed in his house, which the Princess Moë, Pomaré's sister-in-law, had asked Ori to vacate for the visitors before he knew them, but which he was glad he had done when they became friends.
At the isthmus was the only crossing of the belt or, Broom Road, about Tahiti. One had to choose the left or the right, and we wound to the right to reach the Maison des Varos. To the left we could have gone to Tautira, famous as the last stand of the god Oro against the cross, and still under the chieftaincy of Ori-a-Ori, with whom R.L.S. and his family lived several months.
Between them speeches of friendship were addressed to me by the chief and others, and I sorrowfully replied. Choti gave the key-note to our mutual regrets at my leaving by quoting the letter in Tahitian written by Ori-a-Ori to Rui at Honolulu long ago: I make you to know my great affection. At the hour when you left us, I was filled with tears; my wife, Rui Telime, also, and all of my household.
I inquired. Choti sucked the last particle of poi from his forefinger, dipped it into a shell of water, shook hands, and against my pleadings, accompanied me to the house of Ori-a-Ori, the chief of the district. The chief, an excessively tall man, quite six and a half feet and big all over, but not fat, like many natives, was very dark and slightly grizzled.
"Ori-a-Ori," I began, "in America, in the city where I lived, my house was near a small aua, a park in which was a tii, a monument, to a great writer, a teller of tales on paper. On a tall block of stone is a ship of gold, with the sails spread; so she seems to be sailing over the ocean. The friends of the teller of tales built this in in his honor after he died.
They were people of slender worldly knowledge, the carpenter's son knew nothing of history, and ate with his fingers, as did Ori-a-Ori; but their open eyes, unclouded by sophistication and complex interests, looked at the universe and saw God.
T'yonni and Choti, the student and the painter, were foremost in the preparations of the amuraa ma, and many houses supplied the extensive, soft mats which were put on the sward for the table, while the ladies laid the cloth of banana leaves down their center, and adorned it with flowers. Ori-a-Ori sat at the head and I beside him.
I could look to the reef and far across the lagoon to Hitiaa or down the beach, but from that spot no other house was in sight. If I went around the house, I was almost on the Broadway of Tautira, the home of Ori-a-Ori before me, and a coral church close to it, with other buildings and groves toward the mango copse of T'yonni.
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