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Updated: June 2, 2025
The Rarotongans seemed friendly; so Papeiha and Vahineino, who knew the ways of the water from babyhood and could swim before they could walk, waited for a great Pacific breaker, and then swept in on her foaming crest. The canoe grated on the shore.
At last a chief, carried by his warriors, came near. He was the fiercest and most powerful chief on the island. When he came close to Papeiha and his friends, the chief demanded that the wife of one of the Christian teachers should be given to him, so that he might take her away with him as his twentieth wife.
He saw crowds of people round the gods offering food to them; the priests with faces blackened with charcoal and with bodies painted with stripes of red and yellow, the warriors with great waving head-dresses of birds' feathers and white sea-shells. Papeiha, without taking any thought of the peril that he rushed into, went into the midst of the people and said: "Why do you act so foolishly?
What shall we do without the gods?" They were angry, but there was something in the bold face of Papeiha that kept them from slaying him. They allowed him to stay, and did not kill him. Soon after this, Papeiha one day heard shrieking and shouting and wild roars as of men in a frenzy.
They were said to be cannibals. Would they receive the missionaries with clubs and spears? Who would go ashore? On board the ship were brown South Sea men from the island where John Williams lived. They had burned their idols, and now they too were missionaries of Jesus Christ. Their leader was a fearless young man, Papeiha.
Mr Williams heard of it from Auura, and on a voyage to Sydney, which he was compelled to take on account of the health of his wife, he landed on its shores two native missionaries, Papeiha and Vahapata. On first landing they were led by the people to the morai and given up to the gods; but their lives were spared and they were left at liberty.
Papeiha lit a fire; the logs were thrown on; the first Rarotongan idol was burned. "You will die," cried the priests of the fallen god. But to show that the god was just a log of wood, the teachers took a bunch of bananas, placed them on the ashes where the fire had died down, and roasted them. Then they sat down and ate the bananas.
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