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Updated: May 24, 2025
Each, as it was moved, disclosed its lower surface crimson red and turning white. The flames leaped up from the wood between the stones. About the oven, forty feet away, the people of the villages who had gathered, stood or squatted, and solemnly awaited the ritual. The tahua, Tufetufetu, was still in a tiny hut that had been erected for him, and at prayer.
At a sign from Tufetufetu, the people left the proximity of the pit, and while he retired to his hut, several men threw split trunks of banana-trees on the stones. A dense column of white smoke arose, and its acrid odor closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them, my friends of our village were placing the prepared carcasses of pigs on the banana-trunks, with yams, ti-roots and taro.
They had examined Papa Ita's feet before the ceremony and afterward. The flesh was not burned, but, well What? I confess I do not know. A thermometer held over the umu of Papa Ita at a height of six feet registered 282 degrees Fahrenheit. There could be no negation of the extreme heat of the oven of Tufetufetu. I had tested it for myself. No precaution was taken by the walkers.
The heat radiated from the stones, and sitting on the ground I saw the quivering of the beams just above the oven. Tufetufetu traversed the entire length of the umu with no single flinching of his muscles or flutter of his eyelids to betray pain or fear. He raised his wand when he reached the end, and, turning slowly, retraced his steps.
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.
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