NOTES AND DOCUMENTS Myths And The Formation Of Niue
The Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 39, No. 1, 200499NOTES AND DOCUMENTSMyths and the Formation of Niue Island, Central South PacificPacific Island cultures are rich in myths (traditional oral tales), the cultural importance ofwhich have been widely acknowledged.1 It has also become increasingly clear in the last fewdecades that the critical analysis of myths has considerable value in the reconstruction ofhuman history.2 The possible environmental significance of certain myths, particularly thosereferring to the origins of islands and their physical development, has been largelyoverlooked except in specific instances.3This paper examines myths concerning the formation of the high (maximum 70 m)limestone island Niue in the central South Pacific. An emerged atoll, Niue has been risingfor around 500,000 years up the flexure in the Pacific Plate lithosphere formed as aconsequence of its subduction along the Tonga-Kermadec Trench, 275 km west (Figure 1).Uplift has been occurring during the late Quaternary at average rates of 0.13–0.16mm/year; Niue continues to ascend the flexure.Myths Concerning the Origin of Niue and NiueansOwing to its geographical isolation (Figure 1) and the observation that ‘Niuean prehistoryhas been characterised by isolation, rather than by interaction with other islands orarchipelagoes’,4 authentic indigenous myths from Niue may be more likely than those ofsimilar antiquity from other Pacific Islands to have been preserved unchanged. This is notto say that change would not have occurred from within, only that the pace of change andthe attendant obscuring and embellishment of the original details is likely to have been lessthan on an island within an archipelago, for instance, where interactions with other islandcommunities were more commonplace.Traditions concerning the ‘first’ people to settle on Niue state that they were namedHuanaki and Fao. Some recall that Huanaki and Fao were the leaders or chiefs of a groupof five persons who were or became tupua, translated as ‘deified personages’ by Percy Smithand cognate with kupua, the demigods of Hawai’ian tradition.5 There are two main groupsof stories concerning the actions of Huanaki and Fao (and their companions) when theyarrived on Niue. The first talks in general terms about making the island habitable whilethe second is more specific and includes details of geological interest.The mythical Maui, ancestor-god in many Pacific Island cultures, also figures in thetraditional pantheon of Niue but apparently as a latecomer, even subordinate in one of the1 MargaretBeckwith, Hawaiian Mythology (New Haven 1940); R. Finnegan and M. Orbell (eds), South Pacific OralTraditions (Bloomington 1995); B. Flood, B.E. Strong and W. Flood, Pacific Island Legends (Honolulu 1999); S. Savill,Pears Encyclopaedia of Myths and Legends. Oceania and Australia (London 1978).2 Sione Lātūkefu, ‘Oral traditions: an appraisal of their value in historical research in Tonga’, Journal of PacificHistory, 3 (1968), 135–43; P.M. Mercer, ‘Oral tradition in the Pacific: problems of interpretation’, Journal of PacificHistory, 14 (1979), 130–53; N. Gunson, ‘Understanding Polynesian traditional history’, Journal of Pacific History, 28(1993), 139–58.3 P.W. Taylor, ‘Myths, legends and volcanic activity: an example from northern Tonga’, Journal of the PolynesianSociety (hereinafter JPS), 104 (1995), 323–46; D. Luders, ‘Legend and history: did the Vanuatu–Tonga kava tradecease in A.D. 1447?’, JPS, 105 (1996), 287–310; Patrick D. Nunn, ‘Early human settlement and the possibility ofcontemporaneous volcanism, western Kadavu, Fiji’, Domodomo, 12 (1999), 36–49.4 Richard Walter and Atholl Anderson, ‘Archaeology of Niue Island: initial results’, JPS, 104 (1995), 478.5 S. Percy Smith, ‘Niue Island, and its people’, JPS, 11 (1902), 196; Beckwith, Hawaiian Mythology.ISSN 0022-3344 print; 1469-9605 online/04/010099-10; Carfax Publishing; Taylor and Francis Ltd 2004 The Journal of Pacific History Inc.DOI: 10.1080/00223340410001684877
100FIGUREJOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY1: The location of Niue in the Pacific.myths collected by Smith to Huanaki and Fao.6 This ranking, so different from most othercentral Pacific Island cultures, suggests that Maui may not have been known to the earliestinhabitants of Niue but was introduced only when a later group of migrants settled there,perhaps from Samoa or the Cook Islands where his apotheosis is of greater antiquity.7 Mauimyths comprise the third group discussed below.The first group of stories state that the tupua landed on the east coast of Niue at Motu(Figure 2), coming from beneath a pool on the reef. Fao climbed a little way up the cliff untilhe found a small flat area upon which he was able to stand with only one foot. A little later,Huanaki joined him and together they ‘worked away’ until the island was fit for habitation.8It may be significant that the earliest-known settlement on Niue is at Anatoloa Cave,9 justinland from Motu.Other stories enlarge on what Huanaki and Fao did to make Niue habitable. In a storyfrom Avatele village on Niue, Fao also landed first but apparently found Niue covered withthe sea (at least at high tide) so worked to try and make the tides go out. He was unableto do this alone, and it was not until Huanaki arrived to help him that the waters receded.10Another story finds Huanaki and Fao landing together at Motu and ‘working at buildingthis island’ by facing the wind and emptying water into the caverns on each side of the reefor rock. They did not succeed well because the wind kept blowing the water back across6 Smith, ‘Niue Island, and its people’, 197.7 Katherine Luomala, Maui-of-a-thousand-tricks: his Oceanic and European biographers (Honolulu 1949).8 Pulekula, ‘The traditions of Niue-Fekai (Translated by Smith, S. Percy)’, JPS, 12 (1903), 22–4.9 Walter and Anderson, ‘Archaeology of Niue Island’.10 E.M. Loeb, History and Traditions of Niue (Honolulu 1926).
FORMATION OF NIUE ISLANDFIGURE1012: Niue Island, showing the outline of the geomorphology and places mentioned in the text.the land, and it was not until three other tupua arrived to help that the land was cleared ofwater and was ready to colonise.11The second group of stories is more explicit about what Huanaki and Fao did to makeNiue habitable. The fullest and earliest-recorded account of the origin of Niue was given byPeniamina, the first Christian missionary on the island. He wrote that Niueanstrace their origin to Huanaki and Fao, two men who swam from Tonga. They found the island[Niue] just above the surface, and washed by the ocean. They got up on it, stamped with thefoot, up it rose, the water ran off, and the dry land appeared. They stamped again, and up sprangthe grass, trees, and other vegetation.12A similar story was told to T.H. Hood who wrote that, when Hunanaki (sic) and Fao landedon Niue, the island ‘was just above the waters, and washed by the waves. They stampedupon it, and suddenly it arose from the ocean: a second stamp caused trees and plants tospring, and cover its surface.’13 The story was also recounted by others,14 each of whom mayhave acquired it directly from indigenous informants. The legend of ‘The Missing Island’also contains elements in which a submerged island rises once a person’s feet touch it.1511 V. Kumitau and M. Hekau, ‘Origins of the Niue people’, in Government of Niue, Niue: a history of the island(Suva 1982), 83–90.12 Reported by G. Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia (London 1861), 468–9.13 T.H. Hood, Notes of a Cruise in H.M.S. ‘Fawn’ in the Western Pacific in the Year 1862 (Edinburgh 1863), 24.14 T. Powell, Savage Island: a brief account of the island of Niué, and of the work of the gospel among its people (London 1868);E. Tregear, ‘Niue, or Savage Island’, JPS, 2 (1893), 11–16; Basil Thomson, Savage Island (London 1902); M. Morris,‘The history of Niue-Fekai, a New Zealand dependency’, MA thesis, Auckland University (n.d.).15 Niue Education Department, A Resource Book for Teachers (Alofi 1972), 47–9.
102JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORYThere are Niuean traditions which refer to Maui fishing up Niue in much the samemanner as he is said to have fished up other Pacific Islands including many in FrenchPolynesia and Hawai’i.16 One tradition told to Smith stated that Maui ‘completed the workof Fao and Huanaki in raising Niue to its present elevation above the level of the sea’.17Another Maui tradition from Niue, written down in 1901 by John Lupo and published 22years later in translation, recalls how ‘in the beginning’ Niue was nothing but coral rock (hepunga) but then it was seen by Maui who let down his hook, ‘hauled the punga up to thesurface, and lo! there stood an island’.18A particularly interesting account of the Maui myth for Niue states that in the days when‘the ocean rolled unbroken’ over Niue, Maui was in a cave on the sea floor and pushed itup until Niue became ‘a reef awash at low water’; with another heave, Maui ‘sent it higherthan the spray can reach and it became an [high limestone] island like to Tonga’.19Interpretation of MythsThere is no reason why any of these myths should have meaning, either an environmentalgeological meaning or a historical meaning. To insist that these myths — indeed any myths— have such meaning is to ignore the reasons why many myths were created and is oftenalso to underestimate the narrative powers of pre-modern humans. Having said that, it isfelt that these particular origin myths have meaning for two reasons. First, they werecommon on Niue around the time before the start of the 20th century; at this time it isreasonable to assume that people living on the island were far more aware of oral traditionsthan they are today and that these origin myths were recounted in accurate, evenpainstaking detail. Secondly, most of the origin myths are consistent and recall similardetails; of particular geological significance is the way in which the island was successivelyraised by stamping or by pushing. It is unlikely, albeit not impossible, that these originmyths recorded in a number of places from a number of informants were inventions, recentor otherwise. In this spirit, the author proceeds with his analysis while accepting the fact thatthere may always be legitimate criticism of it.At the time people first arrived, Niue clearly needed some ‘work’ before it was suitablefor more intensive settlement. While much of the work may have involved the establishmentof agriculture, the location of potable water and the adaptation of fishing strategies to thedeeply plunging coastline, some myths speak of the need to clear the ocean from the islandsurface before people could live there. There is no possibility that Niue was significantlycloser to sea level 2,000 years or so ago, when people are thought to have arrived first,20than it is today so this detail must be treated as allegorical. Perhaps it recalls the difficultyof subsisting along the windward (east) coast of Niue, where salt spray in places like Togoaccounts for a lack of coastal forest for almost 800 m inland. Such an interpretation leadsone to question whether in fact the early colonists did stay along this comparativelyinhospitable coast rather than a more amenable location on the island.21The second group of myths involve stamping and the rising of Niue. Stamping may havebeen an explanation for the shaking of the island during earthquakes. In many other partsof the Pacific Islands, earthquakes have been interpreted as movements of a god livingbeneath the island surface, although the stamping motif also occurs in Tonga.22 It is alsofound in island groups where earthquakes do not occur like the Cook Islands and the16 Luomala, ‘Maui-of-a-thousand-tricks’, 136, 270; R.W. Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia(Cambridge 1933) Vol. 1, 32 ff.; Patrick D. Nunn, ‘Fished up or thrown down: the geography of Pacific Islandorigin myths’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93 (2003), 350–64.17 Smith, ‘Niue Island, and its people’, 197.18 J. Cowan, ‘The story of Niue: genesis of a South Sea island’, JPS, 32 (1923), 238–43.19 Thomson, Savage Island, 85–6.20 Walter and Anderson, ‘Archaeology of Niue Island’.21 Ibid.22 Lorimer Fison, Tales from Old Fiji (London 1907), 144–5.
FORMATION OF NIUE ISLAND103Marquesas23 and where, if autochthonous, it may have been an explanation for groundshaking during large-magnitude coastal landslides. The added detail in the Niue myths —that the island rose with each stamp — suggests an earthquake which caused uplift. Such‘coseismic uplift’ is common alongthe convergent plate margins of the south and westPacific, including nearby Tonga,24 but is not thought to affect intraplate islands like Niue.25The additional information that the island appeared with the first stamp, and the vegetationwith the second, are motifs which occur throughout the Pacific Islands as allegories of islanddiscovery, perhaps interwoven with experiences or memories of coseismic uplift.Since Maui is thought not to have been one of the ancestor-gods of the first Niueans,those myths which involve him are probably more recent than those involving Huanaki andFao, and are likely to have reached Niue through diffusion. Yet all the Maui myths for Niueinvolve elements of uplift — one can be interpreted as coseismic uplift — which suggeststhat these myths may also incorporate elements of original myths recalling (coseismic) upliftoverlain by more recently-introduced myths.Taken together, all the myths concerning the formation and pre-European settlement ofNiue suggest that the people who created them either (a) witnessed uplift of Niue or (b)recognised the island as being of a type which experienced uplift.Witnessing Uplift of NiueThe long-term uplift rate of Niue, calculated from 230Th/234U dates of emerged reefs,26 is0.13–0.16 mm/year, as we have seen. This is an average for the entire middle and lateQuaternary period (last 500,000 years).Oral traditions suggest that the first Niueans — Huanaki and Fao — arrived about AD700.2827 Archaeologists have more precise and plausible dates; M.M. Trotter estimated 1500BP, while the earliest cultural layer (at Anatoloa Cave) dated by Richard Walter and AthollAnderson formed 2053–1620 calendar years BP (103 BC–AD330).29 Taking the range of lateHolocene uplift rates as 0.13–0.16 mm/year, this means that Niue has risen 21–33 cm sincehuman occupation. It is unlikely that uplift of this magnitude (around 1 cm of uplift withina 60-year lifespan) would have merited enough attention to have become a persistent andcentral component of origin myths.The nature of uplift of Niue must be considered in this context. Slow continuousmonotonic uplift of 0.13–0.16 mm/year is unlikely to have attracted the attention of a singlegeneration, yet this is exactly the type of upliftwhich affects islands in intraplate (rather thanplate-boundary) situations such as Niue.30 In contrast, islands in plate-boundary locations(like those in Tonga) often experience uplift which occurs in short abrupt bursts coincidentwith earthquakes (coseismic uplift) so, within a 60-year human lifespan, a single eventinvolving abrupt uplift of 1.5 m, for example, is likelyto have registered in pre-literate oralhistories as much as it has in modern narratives.3123 PeterBuck (Te Rangi Hiroa), Vikings of the Sunrise (Christchurch 1954); Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefsof Central Polynesia.24 Yoko Ota, ‘Marine terraces and active faults in Japan with special reference to co-seismic events’, in MarieMorisawa and J.T. Hack (eds), Tectonic Geomorphology (London 1985), 345–66.25 Patrick D. Nunn, Oceanic Islands (Oxford 1994).26 Patrick D. Nunn, William R. Dickinson and Akio Omura, unpublished work on the geological history of Niue.27 Loeb, ‘History and Traditions of Niue’, 24.28 M.M. Trotter, Niue Island Archaeological Survey (Christchurch 1979)29 Walter and Anderson, ‘Archaeology of Niue Island’.30 J. Dubois, J. Launay and J. Recy, ‘Uplift movements in New Caledonia — Loyalty Islands area and their platetectonics interpretation’, Tectonophysics, 24 (1974), 133–50; Nunn, Oceanic Islands.31 Examples include the effects of the coseismic-uplift events in Vanuatu (R. Howorth, ‘Baseline coastal studies,Port Vila, Vanuatu’, United Nations ESCAP, CCOP/SOPAC Technical Report 51 (1985)), Solomon Islands (J.C. Grover,‘Seismological and volcanological studies in the British Solomon Islands to 1961’, British Solomon Islands GeologicalRecords, 2 (1965), 183–8), and New Zealand (Brad Pillans, ‘A late Quaternary uplift map for North Island, NewZealand’, Bulletin of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 24 (1986), 409–17).
104JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORYOn account of its abruptness and its infrequent occurrence, coseismic uplift of Niuewould be expected to have attracted the attention of the island’s inhabitants and may haveproduced enduring effects which are likely to have led to coseismic-uplift events becomingincorporated into the origin myths for Niue.Coseismic Uplift of Niue? Oral Evidence, Geological EvidenceEarthquakes known to have been felt on Niue are those which occur along the convergencezone marked by the Tonga Trench to the west; most such earthquakes have epicentresmore than 300 km distant from Niue. There are two Niuean words for earthquake,maui and mafuike,32 suggesting that earthquakes were felt regularly throughout the postsettlement history of the island. Earthquakes also feature in Niuean myths. One isof a woman Folahau who prayed for water because Niue was in the grip of a severedrought; ‘then the earth shook with a great earthquake the waters came up and boiledover’.33Questioning of long-term residents of Niue by the author and his students duringtwo visits to the island suggest that there is no contemporary memory, collective orindividual, of any earthquakes which caused changes to the form or level of the island. Butthere are other indicators that these may have occurred. Five names for the islandpre-dating the modern one were recorded by Smith.34 One of these is Nuku-tuluea, themeaning of which Smith did not know. A later writer was told by one of his informants thatthis name means ‘Island that grew up by itself’,35 which could be interpreted as recalling itsvisible uplift.If one supposes that a coseismic-uplift event would have disrupted food productionon Niue, perhaps through a combination of physical (water-table lowering) andsocietal disturbance, then it is worth noting that a great famine in Niuean traditionalhistory was stated by J. Cowan to have been attributed to three gods: Futimotu, Futifonuaand Alelo-loa (Long Tongue). Futimotu is translated as ‘Lift-up-the-island’ and Futifonuaas ‘Lift-up-the-land’;36 ‘hoist’ is preferred to ‘lift’ by linguist Paul Geraghty.37 A recollectionof coseismic uplift may also be preserved in one of the incantations (lau) used by thepeople of Avatele to induce rocks at their harbour entrance to rise; Fata-a-iki reports thatone rock was raised successfully, but a second was not because of a mistake in the wordsof the lau.38In summary, while there is no doubt that distant earthquakes are felt on Niue, oralevidence that coseismic uplift occurred during any earthquake (as the formation mythsmight be interpreted as suggesting) is marginal and ambiguous.The author’s geological surveys of Niue were targeted specifically at evidence for uplift.Much of the lower-level evidence comprises vertically discrete erosional shorelines, typicallynotches and shore platforms, emerged above their modern analogues. The morphology ofthese series is similar to those considered to have been formed by repeated coseismic-upliftevents elsewhere,39 but it is possible that the series simply reflects the preferential erosion of32 S. Percy Smith, ‘Notes on the dialect of Niue Island’, JPS, 10 (1901), 181; Smith, ‘Niue Island, and its people’.33 Pulekula, ‘The traditions of Niue-Fekai’, 100.34 Smith, ‘Niue Island, and its people’, 81–2.35 Loeb, History and Traditions of Niue, 12. The informant was Uea of Liku Village.36 Cowan, ‘The story of Niue’, 239, 161.37 Pers. comm., 2000.38 Quoted by Smith, ‘Niue Island, and its people’, 202.39 E.g. Ota, ‘Marine terraces and active faults in Japan’; Yoko Ota, ‘Coseismic uplift in coastal zones of thewestern Pacific rim and its implications for coastal evolution’, Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie, Supplementband, 81 (1991),163–79; Patrick D. Nunn and Felise Tonga Finau, ‘Late Holocene emergence history of Tongatapu island, SouthPacific’, Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie, 39 (1995), 69–95.
FORMATION OF NIUE ISLAND105softer strata and/or the interaction between changing sea levels and changing rates of slowcontinuous monotonic uplift.Geophysical models of island uplift in locations like that of Niue are likewise against theidea of coseismic uplift. For this to occur, it is necessary for an abrupt slip between twolithospheric slabs (plates) to occur beneath the Earth’s surface. The plate tectonics modeldoes not allow for such events to be happening in the area of Niue, although it does allowthem to occur to the west in New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands.Recent modelling of the uplift history of Niue within the last 500,000 years shows that theuplift rates of 0.13–0.16 mm/year have applied throughout this time and that there is noscope within the model for abrupt rather than continuous monotonic uplift.40The geological evidence that Niue may have experienced coseismic uplift is no morecompelling than the oral (non-mythical) evidence and leads one to consider whether themythical evidence may have reached Niue from elsewhere.Although it is uncertain where the earliest inhabitants of Niue came from, the islands ofTonga to the west seem the likeliest place,41 and indeed one of the accounts of Huanaki andFao explicitly states this to be the case (see above). It is possible that experiences of coseismicuplift were applied to Niue by early arrivals, not because they witnessed coseismic uplift onNiue, but because the island looked just like the high limestone islands in Tonga where they(or their ancestors) had witnessed coseismic uplift.Coseismic Uplift of Tongan Islands: Geological Evidence, Oral EvidenceCoseismic uplift along island arcs marking convergent plate boundaries in the west andsouthwest Pacific has been well documented.42 Coseismic-uplift events are generally infrequent on human time-scales yet involve memorable amounts of abrupt uplift. Forexample, Awashima Island in Japan has been affected by at least 67 coseismic-uplift eventswith an average recurrence time of 1,900 years;43 abrupt uplift during the 1964 earthquakeaveraged 1.5 m on Awashima.44 Some islands in the Lau Group of eastern Fiji are thoughtto have experienced coseismic-uplift events with magnitudes of 1.5–2.6 m every 1,045years.45Coseismic uplift also affects the Tonga frontal arc which includes the limestone islandgroups of Tonga (’Eua, Tongatapu, Ha’apai, Vava’u and Niuatoputapu). Evidence forcoseismic uplift of Tongatapu island includes the eyewitness report of the 1853 earthquakeby J.G. Sawkins46 and the observations of degraded corals in the Fanga ’Uta Lagoon by40 Nunn, Dickinson and Omura, unpublished work on the geological41 Trotter, Niue Island Archaeological Survey, 50.42 Toshio Kawana and Paolo A. Pirazzoli, ‘Holocene coastline changeshistory of Niue.and seismic uplift in Okinawa Island, theRyukyus, Japan’, Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie, Supplementband, 57 (1985), 11–31; Yoko Ota, Alan Hull and Kelvin R.Berryman, ‘Coseismic uplift of Holocene marine terraces in the Pakarae River area, eastern North Island, NewZealand’, Quaternary Research, 35 (1991), 331–46; Paolo A. Pirazzoli, M. Arnold, P. Giresse, M.L. Hsieh and P.M.Liew, ‘Marine deposits of late glacial times exposed by tectonic uplift on the east coast of Taiwan’, Marine Geology,110 (1993), 1–6; Nunn and Finau, ‘Late Holocene emergence history of Tongatapu island’; Yoko Ota and JohnChappell, ‘Late Quaternary coseismic uplift events on the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea, deduced fromcoral terrace data’, Journal of Geophysical Research, 101 (1996), 6071–82.43 Yoko Ota, S. Kashiwagi, K. Sakurai and J. Ikeda, ‘Coseismic deformation of late Quaternary marine terracesat Awashima Island, off Niigata coast, central Japan (in Japanese with English abstract)’, Journal of Geography(Chigakuzassi), 97 (1988), 26–38.44 J.P. Rothé, The Seismicity of the Earth (Paris 1969).45 Patrick D. Nunn, ‘Holocene tectonic histories for five islands in the south-central Lau group, South Pacific’,The Holocene, 5 (1995), 160–71.46 J.G. Sawkins, ‘On the movement of land in the South Sea islands’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society ofLondon, 12 (1856), 383–4.
106JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORYLeon Zann et al.,47 which are consistent with abrupt uplift during the 1914 earthquake.Work on emerged notches along the south coast of Tongatapu led to the conclusion thatthe island had experienced at least nine coseismic-uplift events during the Holocene with anaverage magnitude of 0.74 m and an average maximum recurrence time of 869 years.48 Asimilar explanation was favoured for ’Eua island.49 As with all geological records ofcoseismic-uplift events, it is possible that their recurrence times have been grossly overestimated because the geological record is either incomplete or not readily decipherable at thescale required. This may well apply to Tonga, where coseismic-uplift events apparentlyoccurred on Tongatapu in 1853 and 1914 (see above), a recurrence time of just 61 years.Myths involving a (demi-) god fishing up islands in the Pacific may be metaphors for theirfirst discovery by particular groups of people,50 but sometimes include details suggesting thatcoseismic-uplift occasionally affected particular islands.The earliest account of a fishing-up myth from Tonga is by William Mariner, who wasthere from 1806 to 1810. He recorded that the people believed that one day Tangaloa(Tagaloa), their ancestral god, had gone out fishing when his hook became caught in a rockat the bottom of the sea. Tangaloa heaved and drew up all the Tonga islands, which wouldhave remained as a single landmass had the line not broken.51 Another story refers to theTuli, a child of Tangaloa who was a bird (a species of plover), who complained to his fatherthat there was nowhere for him to rest in the vast ocean. In consequence,Tangaloa fished up a large stone from the bottom of the sea with a fish-hook. Having raised thestone to the surface, he gave it to his son for a dwelling place. On going thither to take possessionof his new home, however, Tuli found that every wave or swell of the ocean partially overflowedit, which compelled him to hop from one part to another of the stone to prevent his feet beingwetted by each succeeding wave. Annoyed at this, he returned to the skies to complain to hisfather, who, by a second application of the mighty fish-hook, raised the land to the desiredheight.52A similar story refers to the island ’Eua, where one day the messenger of Tangaloa observeda new island. On a second visit, the island had risen higher, and on a third even higher.53Another account speaks of Maui, the best-known land-fisher in the Pacific Islands,54 raisingthis land of Tonga [Tongatapu] above the waves. Here he trod all the hills down into rich andfertile plains; on which, even as he trod, there sprang up grass and flowers and trees, while theearth swelled into hillocks round his feet, bursting with yams and sweet potatoes, and all mannerof food, so that the gods shouted aloud for joy. Next he fished up Haabai [Ha’apai] and Vavau[Vava’u] and Niua [Niuatoputapu] and the other islands near them.55Myths possibly recalling recurrent coseismic-uplift events come from elsewhere in Tonga.56All these myths contain details which suggest that people witnessed coseismic-uplift eventson the limestone islands of Tonga — as the geological evidence suggests they must have —and incorporated details of these memorable events into their stories about the islands’formation.47 Leon P. Zann, W.J. Kimmerer and R.E. Brock (eds), The Ecology of Fanga ’Uta Lagoon, Tongatapu, Tonga (Suva1984)48 Nunn and Finau, ‘Late Holocene emergence history of Tongatapu island’.49 Patrick D. Nunn, Pacific Island Landscapes (Suva 1998).50 Luomala, Maui-of-a-thousand-tricks.51 J. Martin, Tonga Islands: William Mariner’s account (London 1817), repr. 1981 by Vava’u Press, Neiafu, Tonga.52 J.B. Stair, ‘Jottings on the mythology and spirit-lore of old Samoa’, JPS, 5 (1896), 33–57 (emphasis added).53 F.X. Reiter, ‘Traditions tonguiennes’, Anthropos, 2 (1907), 230–41, 438–48, 743–50; A.W. Reed, Myths andLegends of Polynesia (Wellington 1974)54 Luomala, Maui-of-a-thousand-tricks.55 Fison, Tales From Old Fiji, 145.56 E.W. Gifford, Tongan Myths and Tales (Honolulu 1924), 15.
FORMATION OF NIUE ISLAND107Similarities in Form and Lithology Between Niue and Certain Tongan IslandsNiue is a high ( 70 m) island made wholly of reef limestone. It is an emerged atoll in whichthe form of the former ring reef (the Mutalau Reef) surrounding the now-dry lagoon is clear.On the outside of the Mutalau Reef is a staircase of surfaces, the broadest and mostcommon of which are aggradational surfaces created by the emergence of former fringingreefs.Similar reef-terrace staircases are conspicuous features of the landscapes of Tongatapuand ’Eua islands but less so of the other limestone islands in Tonga. Together with Vava’u,these two Tongan islands most closely resemble Niue in form, all having some coasts withhigh sheer cliffs and narrow fringing reefs similar to that which surrounds most of Niue. Itis reasonable to suppose that a person familiar with the formation and uplift of islands inTonga would, upon initial acquaintance with Niue, suppose it to have been formed in thesame way. And it is reasonable to suppose that those most conspicuous manifestations ofuplift in Tonga on a human timescale — coseismic-
The Journal of Paci c History, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2004 99 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS Myths and the Formation of Niue Island, Central South Pacific Paci
The ‘Just So Stories’ by Rudyard Kipling as creation myths. These link well with Aboriginal Creation myths. Look at myths from different countries which explain the same idea differently e.g. the Canadian Indian creation myth of ‘How Glooskap Found Summer’ and Persephone and the creation of Winter and Summer. Bailiwick legends:
Myths and Realities As Samway and McKeon (2007) have noted, “a body of myths” or “urban legends” have been associated with ELLs and their education. They have identified fifty-eight myths about ELLs that fall into ten categories: demographics, enrollment, native language instruction,
4 Security Information and Event Management Myths Many myths abound within the SIEM/logging data management domain, and some are accepted as the truth by the misinformed. Some myths result from the inaccurate interpretation of possibly incomplete information by well-intentioned persons, while other myths are the result of intentional
Table of Contents Greek Myths Tell It Again! Read-Aloud Anthology Alignment Chart for Greek Myths .v Introduction to Greek Myths. .1 Lesson 1: The Twelve Gods of Mount Olympus . 11 Lesson 2: Prometheus and Pandora. . 24 Lesson 3: Demeter and Persephone. 36 Lesson 4: Arachne the Weaver .
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Myths, Legends, Folktales and Fables of Guyana By Dmitri Allicock for the Guyaneseonline blog The practices of Myths, legends, folktales and fables is said to provide continuity and stability to a culture. They foster a shared set of perspectives, values, history and literature, in
Beloved is regarded as the best work ever written by Morrison. In this novel, Toni Morrison uses a large number of myths and archetypes. Through the myths and archetypes, the complex religious and cultural identity of African Americans as an ethnic group is revealed. 1. Introduction . Toni Morrison (1931-) is a famous contemporary American .
technologies and computation methods for the automotive traction motors. Various cooling methods, including the natural, forced air, forced liquid and phase change types, are discussed with the pros and cons of each method being compared. The key factors for optimizing the heat transfer efficiency of each cooling system are highlighted here. Furthermore, the real life examples of these methods .
