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1992
Voyage: Sail to Ra`iatea
by
Dennis Kawaharada
Photo
below: Sol Kahoohalahala videotaping the Bay and Valley of Tautira, Tahiti
Two
days after landing in Pape`ete, Tahiti, on July 15, Hokule`a sailed to the
village of Tautira, where the canoe would be tied up at a small harbor for two
months, awaiting the continuation of the voyage for education in mid-September.
Tautira
is a small town at the end of the paved road on the northeastern end of the
island of Tahiti. Its location and character reminds one of Hana, Maui; like
Hana, it's far from the island's urban and tourist development and retains a
rural and fishing life-style.
The
Polynesian Voyaging Society and Hokule`a have a special relationship with
Tautira. The canoe first stopped there for festivities in 1976 during a trip
around the island Tahiti. Before the 1980 voyage to Tahiti, Puaniho Tauotaha, a
canoe-carver from Tautira, made several canoes in Hawai`i and demonstrated the
ancient art of canoe carving to interested members of the Voyaging Society. The
Maire-nui Canoe Club of Tautira, once the champion of Tahiti, has raced in
Hawai`i, and some clubs in Hawai`i have adopted their training and racing
techniques. And before sailing back to Hawai`i in 1987, the Hokule`a crew stayed
in Tautira waiting for the right winds. The friendships established have lasted
over the years. (For more on Tautira, see Sam Low's "Tautira:
Hokule'a's Home in Tahiti" and "The
Old Men of Tautira").
On
September 19, 1992, a new crew under Kapena Billy Richards arrived in Tautira to
continue the Voyage of Education. The crew was divided into three groups, and
each group was hosted by a family-Puaniho and Mahine Tauotaha; Terevaura and
Octaze Tihoni; and Robert and Mary Wahler. Tautira mayor Sonny Matehau and his
family provided breakfast and dinner for the crew each day.
After
a week-and-a-half of preparation , minor repairs, and provisioning, Hokule`a
departed from Tautira for the island of Huahine on the morning of September 10.
A few days earlier a stone statue had been placed on the shore of Tautira Bay to
commemorate a marae named Taputapuatea that once existed nearby, an offshoot of
the marae in Ra`iatea, where Hokule`a would head after Huahine. Town people and
schoolchildren gathered around the stone god to bid farewell to the canoe with
songs and dances. After last hugs and exchanges of gifts, Hokule`a set sail with
a light southeast tradewind at its stern. Huahine lay about 150 miles to the
northwest.
On this sail, the canoe was guided for the first time by apprentice navigator
Keahi Omai (left, on board the canoe Eala). He backsighted on the peak of
Maire-nui in Tautira for most of the day, keeping it dead astern. As evening
fell the stars Hokule`a (Arcturus) and Hikianalia (Spica), setting ahead of the
canoe, provided clues to direction. Later, Ka-maile-mua and Ka-maile-hope (Alpha
and Beta Centauri) setting on the port beam were guides. Because the night sky
was often cloudy, the steersmen also used the ocean swells to orient the canoe,
two swells from the northeast and one from the southeast rolling under the canoe
from stern to bow. For confirmation of the canoe's heading, `Omai waited for the
appearance of the constellation Iwakeli`i, or Cassiopeia, which he expected to
rise off the starboard beam before midnight. The appearance of this
constellation confirmed his course. After midnight, a whole set of navigation
stars called Ke Ka o Makali`i ("The Canoe Bailer of Makali`i") rose in
the east behind the canoe. While these stars were rising, `Omai sighted Huahine
faintly lit by moonlight in the direction pointed out by sailmaster Nainoa
Thompson. Before sunrise, he also sighted in the light refracted over the
eastern horizon the outline of the island of Tahiti, which had already
disappeared from view.
In
the morning, the green hills of Huahine appeared dead ahead of the canoe. (The
excitement of landfall was tempered by a radio report that Hurricane Iniki was
heading for Kaua`i.)
As
the canoe approached the harbor of Fare, it was greeted by four six-man racing
canoes and a motorized double-hulled canoe. The canoe anchored off the Bali Hai
Hotel, near the site where, in 1979, Bishop Museum Archaeologist Yoshihiko
Sinoto found the remains of an ancient voyaging canoe-two 23-foot planks from
the hull, a 12-foot steering paddle with a six-foot blade, and a 36-foot mast.
These remains were embedded and preserved in the swampy land overgrown with hau
trees and rushes near the hotel. The canoe parts were dated between 850-1000
A.D.
Dr. Sinoto and his staff are currently working on Huahine to restore the
Mata`ire`a Hill Complex at Maeva on the north end of the island, an area where
the chiefs of Huahine lived along the fish-rich lagoon and in the fertile
uplands. Unlike on most islands in Polynesia, where the chiefs lived in separate
valleys or districts, the chiefs of Huahine lived together in one area after the
island was unified under one ali`i family. At Maeva are concentrated dozens of
closely situated marae, house foundations, burial platforms, and agricultural
terraces. The mile-long trail through the complex begins at a wall where the
people of Huahine resisted the French marines who landed on the island in l846.
The trail goes past the Marae Mata`ire`a-rahi, an ancient community marae shaded
by a huge sacred banyan tree. The trail culminates at the Marae Paepae Ofata,
built on a dry, fern-covered hillside with a spectacular view of the lagoon and
its fish runs, the coconut-tree lined shore and offshore island, and in the
distance, Huahine-iti, the southern half of the island.
Hokule`a left Huahine before dawn on September 16. Its next stop was the marae
of Taputapuatea in the district of Opoa on the southeastern end of the island of
Ra`iatea. Ra`iatea is eighteen miles east of Huahine, easily seen across a
channel, with the downwind islands of Taha`a and Borabora beyond Ra`iatea to the
northwest.
Ra`iatea,
anciently called Havai`i, is considered the homeland of central Polynesian ali`i
culture and a major center of Polynesian religion and learning. On this island
in the district of Opoa, Peter Buck tells us, "The priests"gathered
the warp of myth and the weft of history together and wove them into the textile
of theology." The general pattern of Polynesian religion was developed
there, with a Sky father (Atea or Wakea) and an Earth mother (Papa) giving birth
to children who had special functions: Tane, or Kane, forestry and
craftsmanship; Tu or Ku, war; Ro`o, or Lono, peace and agriculture; Ta`aroa, or
Kanaloa, marine affairs and fishing; and Ra`a, or La`a, wind and weather. In the
district of Opoa, houses of learning were established, where scholars could
study religion, genealogies, heraldry, and oratory, as well as astronomy,
geography, and navigation.
From
this island in central Polynesia, the pattern of ali`i culture was carried
abroad on voyaging canoes by adventurers, conquerors, and colonizers- west to
the Cook Islands and Aotearoa; south to the Austral Islands and Rapa; east to
the Tuamotus, the Marquesas, and Rapanui, or Easter Island; and north to Hawai`i.
Laniakea on O`ahu's north shore is the Hawaiian form of Ra`iatea; at Laniakea
was a heiau named Kapukapuatea, which was a navigation heiau, like the marae of
Taputapuatea in Ra`iatea; at Poka`i Bay in Wai`anae is Ku`ilioloa heiau, also
associated with navigation and built by the same priest who built Kapukapuatea.
Perhaps Kapukapuatea in Laniakea was founded with a stone taken from the marae
of Taputapuatea in Ra`iatea, as was the custom. Since Kapukapuatea no longer
exists, a stone from Ku`ilioloa in Wai`anae was carried on board Hokule`a in
1992, as a gift for the return home.
The
district of Opoa in Ra`iatea eventually became the center for the worship of the
war god `Oro. `Oro, son of Ta`aroa, or Kanaloa, is said to have been born in
Opoa. The marae of Taputapuatea became dedicated to him. Human sacrifices, first
made to Ta`aroa to free the island from a severe drought, increased when the
more demanding god `Oro began to be worshiped.
 The
cult of `Oro spread to other islands of the region, sometimes through peaceful
persuasion, but more often through conquest. An international alliance
eventually formed in the region, and its meeting place for religious observances
and political deliberations was Taputapuatea. From the eastern and southern
islands, called Te Ao-uri, or "Blue-green lands," came canoes from
Huahine, Tahiti, Mai`ao, and the Austral islands; from the western islands,
called Te Ao-tea, the "White lands," came canoes from Rotuma, Taha`a,
Porapora, Rarotonga in the Cook Islands and Aotearoa, or New Zealand. On an
appointed day, the canoes entered the sacred pass of Te Ava Moa in double file,
the canoes of the blue-green lands from the south and the canoes of the white
lands from the north.
One
of the meanings of "Tapu-tapu-atea" is "Sacrifices from
abroad." On the deck of each canoe were offerings to `Oro, including human
sacrifices, laid out alternately with ulua, shark, and turtle. The canoes were
brought ashore using human corpses as rollers. On shore, the human sacrifices
were drilled through the head and hung by sennit from the trees while the gods
of each of the islands were brought into the inner sanctum, where an image of `Oro
was kept-a figure woven of sennit covered with red and yellow feathers and
wearing a girdle of red feathers; then the most sacred of all the rites took
place, the pai-atua, or assembly of the gods. During these sacred rites, kapu
were enforced.
According
to oral traditions, the people who settled the other Society islands, and who
migrated to other islands like Hawai`i, had fled Ra`iatea because of the
oppressive, tyrannous rule of the priests of `Oro. One story recounts a tragedy
brought about by this tyrannous rule. Kapu were imposed on the the district of
Opoa in preparation for a ceremony for `Oro worship: no cock could crow, no dog
bark; no person or pig could leave its dwellings. The wind died off and the sea
grew calm. However, a young girl named Tere-he went bathing in a river. The gods
drowned her for breaking the kapu. A giant eel swallowed her and was possessed
by her soul. The angry eel tore up the land between the two islands and swam
off. This gigantic fish swam to the east and became the windward island of
Tahiti; its back fin formed the mountain of Orohena, which dominates the western
end of Tahiti. Another fin fell off and became the island of Mo`orea. Other bits
of the fish became the islands of Meti`a, Te Tiaroa, and Mai`ao-iti. According
to Peter Buck, each of these bits of fish in the story represents a group of
people fleeing the oppression of `Oro.
Eventually,
the international alliance centering on `Oro worship at Taputapuatea fell apart
in bloodshed. The priest of the white lands to the west was slain by a high
chief of the blue-green lands to the south and east. The priest of the
blue-green lands was struck down in retaliation, and the two sides parted, never
again to reconvene their meetings at the marae.
According
to the traditions of the cultural group Pupu Arioi, the last canoe to leave
Taputapuatea was Hotu Te Nui. It sailed to Hawai`i and left behind a kapu on the
sacred pass. Since that time-centuries ago-all the canoes from Mo`orea which had
tried to sail to the marae had failed to reach their destination. The Pupu Arioi
believed that only when a canoe from Hawai`i returned to the marae through the
sacred pass could the kapu be lifted. The group conveyed this message to the
Polynesian Voyaging Society.
When
Hokule`a first visited Tahiti in 1976, the crew took the canoe to Taputapuatea
to pay homage to the voyagers who had set forth from there during the great
migrations of the 12th to 14th century. However, Hokule`a came to the marae
through the shipping channel near the port town of Uturoa rather than through Te
Ava Moa, "The Sacred Pass," through which the ancient canoes
traditionally came to the marae.
In
1985, on the Voyage of Rediscovery, Hokule`a lifted the kapu which prevented the
Mo`orea canoes from reaching Taputapuatea. After a fire- walking ceremony for
purification and other ceremonies on the island of Mo`orea, Hokule`a sailed
under Navigator Nainoa Thompson and Captain Gordon Pi`ianai`a to Ra`iatea. A
rainbow appeared ahead of the canoe, and the canoe glided toward the center of
the rainbow, as if guiding itself, as it sometimes does when the wind is on its
beam. The steering paddle was taken out of the water and tied down. Eventually
Ra`iatea appeared beneath the rainbow. Crew member John Kruse reported everyone
got "chicken skin." When the crew landed, the people of Ra`iatea
greeted the returning descendants with song.
In the early morning on September 16, 1992, Hokule`a left Huahine for Ra`iatea
to participate in a ceremony planned at Taputapuatea. Because the winds were
light, the canoe was towed across the channel by its escort boat Kamahele. As
the canoe approached Ra`iatea, which was misted in rain and under layers of dark
grey rainclouds, a rainbow arched above the sacred pass. From offshore, the crew
sighted an `iwa, or frigate bird, the shadow of `Oro, soaring above the marae.
Na`ia (dolphins), honu ( turtles), and mano (sharks) were also sighted as the
canoe approached land. All of these were signs of a reconciliation to take
place. On board Hokule`a were Hawaiians and Tahitians, descendants of some of
the Ra`iateans who had fled the oppression of `Oro 500 years earlier; also on
board were Cook Islanders and Maoris, descendants of the people whose priest had
been slain at Taputapuatea. Hokule`a was paddled through Te Ava Moa. The crew
landed and was challenged, then greeted by the Ra`iateans after the good will of
the visitors was established. As the crew marched toward the marae past the
nine-foot high stone of chiefly investiture, a heavy downpour began. One
observer pointed out a stone called the queen, and another one known as the
bird. "The queen," she said, "has not spoken since the ancient
navigators deserted Taputapuatea. Today she is weeping tears of joy because they
have returned. Her tears are washing away the kapu that have kept us from the
marae. Now the bird is flying out through the sacred pass to spread the word to
all the people of Polynesia."
For
some of the visitors and hosts, a prophecy was fulfilled: according to oral
tradition, the kapu imposed when the last canoe of people fled the marae 500
year ago could only be lifted when the descendants of those who had fled
returned in search of knowledge and for peaceful and spiritual purposes. Now
that the descendants were returning, the people of Ra`iatea who had been
silenced by the kapu and who were spiritually asleep were reawakened. The heavy
downpour seemed to signify that the ancient period of human sacrifice, which had
begun with the attempt to persuade the god Ta`aroa to end a severe drought, was
coming to a final closure.
 Hokule`a's
Kapena in the Society Islands was Billy Richards (right, photo by Anne Kapulani
Landgraf), a crew member on the canoe's first voyage to Tahiti in 1976. During
that historic voyage he and other Hawaiians came into conflict with the haole
crew members. The conflict stemmed from two very different views of the voyage:
for the haole, the voyage was a scientific experiment to learn the techniques by
which Polynesians had explored and settled the Pacific; for the Hawaiians, the
voyage was an highly emotional journey toward cultural reawakening. The crew's
frustrations in preparing for Hokule`a's first long voyage, and the hardships
and inequities during that voyage aggravated their differences. After landfall,
both sides vented their frustration and anger, which eventually erupted in
physical hostilities on board the canoe.Richards was portrayed as one of the
instigators of the clash, so although he had been chosen as the Kahu of the
canoe prior to its departure from Hawai`i, he was not allowed to sail on
Hokule`a when it first visited Taputapuatea in the summer of 1976. Instead,
Richards was brought to the marae by a man from Huahine who had been hanai to
his family. Richards participated in the ceremony at Taputapuatea first by
making sure that everything was pono with the spirit of the marae, and then by
reciting the names of his fellow crew members, for he was also there to
represent them.
Kapena
Richards saw the sail from Tautira to Taputapuatea in 1992 as the closing of a
circle-the completion of his 1976 voyage. The anger was gone. In 1985, he had
sailed as a watch captain on Hokule`a from Rarotonga to Aotearoa with Dr. Ben
Finney, one of the targets of his anger in 1976. Although some were concerned he
still felt hostility toward Finney, Richards assured them that he had already
made things right through self ho`oponopono.
As
the rain poured down on the marae of Taputapuatea, Kapena Richards saw a
cleansing occurring; the rain was washing into the purifying sea the
centuries-old blood of past human sacrifice, like the cleansing that had already
taken place within himself.
The
crew of Hokule`a arriving at Taputapuatea in 1992 brought the gift of a drum,
fashioned by Keone Nunes of Wai`anae from a coconut trunk, the drumhead lashed
on in the traditional style. The drum, called "Poki`i," "younger
brother or sister," was a descendant of the drum introduced to Hawai`i
centuries ago by La`a-mai-kahiki, son (or foster son) of Mo`ikeha, who was from
Ra`iatea (or from the northwest region of Tahiti ruled by the `Oropa`a or `Olopana
clan).
The
Kamehemeha Schools dancers who performed at Taputapuatea under the direction of
Randie Fong and Kalena Silva performed hula to the pahu drum as a tribute to the
Tahitians who had introduced the drum and hula to Hawai`i. The performance was
another connection in the cycle of the return of the descendants to the
ancestral homeland. In Tahiti, the drumbeat represents the heartbeat of the land
and the people of Tahiti.
In
1929, during a Bishop Museum expedition, Anthropologist Peter Buck visited the
marae of Taputapuatea. There among the ruins he lamented the loss of the
Polynesian spirit: "I had made my pilgrimage to Taputapu-atea, but the dead
could not speak to me. It was sad to the verge of tears. I felt a profound
regret, a regret for-I know not what. Was it for the beating of the temple drum
or the shouting of the populace as the king was raised on high? Was it for the
human sacrifices of olden times? It was for none of these individually but for
something at the back of them all, some living spirit and divine courage that
existed in ancient times and of which Taputapu-atea was a mute symbol. It was
something that we Polynesians have lost and cannot find, something that we yearn
for and cannot recreate. The background in which that spirit was engendered has
changed beyond recovery. The bleak wind of oblivion had swept over Opoa."
On
the morning of September 17, 1992, over sixty years after Buck's visit, a
meeting of navigators, the first in over 500 years, took place in the cafeteria
of the community center at Opoa, where the crew was housed.
Four
navigators from Hawai`i, seven from the Cook Islands, and one from New Zealand
discussed their sail plans and course strategies for voyages they were about to
make, or had already made. It was a final class in navigation and a rite of
initiation for those embarking on their first voyages. The meeting was presided
over by navigator Nainoa Thompson; also in attendance was his teacher Mau
Piailug, the master navigator from Satawal in Micronesia. The meeting was a way
of showing Piailug that his knowledge of wayfinding was being passed on to
others, that this knowledge, once planted by his teaching, had taken root,
branched, leafed, flowered, and was now bearing fruit. Taputapuatea, which could
mean "sacredness radiating outward," had once again become a place of
learning. After spending 17 years recovering the ancient knowledge of voyaging
and navigating, Thompson had begun to recreate what the anthropologist Buck had
lamented was lost forever-the "living spirit and divine courage that
existed in ancient times."
CREW
MEMBERS (As of August, 1992): TAUTIRA - HUAHINE 1992
Nainoa
Thompson, Sailmaster; Chad Baybayan, Navigator; Keahi Omai, Navigator; Billy
Richards, Captain; Gilbert Ane; John Eddy, Film Documentation; Tiger Espera;
Brickwood Galuteria, Communications; Harry Ho; Sol Kahoohalahala; Dennis
Kawaharada, Communications; Reggie Keaunui; Keone Nunes, Oral Historian; Eric
Martinson; Nalani Minton, Traditional Medicine; Esther Mookini, Hawaiian
Language; Mel Paoa; Cliff Watson, Film Documentation; Nathan Wong, M.D.
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