– 4 –

Culture

Manihiki and Rakahanga, atolls 25 miles apart, are occupied by a people sprung from one family of settlers. The whole population once lived on one atoll at a time and moved back and forth from one atoll to the other when forced to do so by depletions of the coconut and puraka (species of taro) supplies. Manihiki and Rakahanga are so low that one atoll cannot be seen from the other, but from a point halfway between them both are visible. The people, in going from one atoll to the other, used the Magellan clouds (Na Mahu) as guides. The voyages were made in fleets of double sailing canoes, and the Whakaheo ariki (p. 52), because he was believed to control the weather conditions that insured a successful voyage, took command. Now and again the voyagers were unexpectedly overtaken by storms, but such disasters did not deter the people from making their inter-atoll voyages, for they were impelled by an important need, the urge for food. The occasional loss of life was regarded merely as the natural toll of the sea which the ancestors had paid from time immemorial. It remained for outside influence, in 1852, to use the loss of life as a means of dividing the population into permanent settlements on each atoll. Thus, though Manihiki and Rakahanga are two atolls, the culture is one. References in this text to the culture of either atoll may be taken to apply to the culture of both areas.