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Anthropology and Religion

The Creation of Man

The Creation of Man

The religious seminary at Opoa, having constructed a theology that accounted for the supernatural origin page 48of the gods, had set the stage for the creation of man. It is in keeping with Polynesian modes of thought that the material side of man, through physical birth, should come from the female and that rank and power should be inherited through the male. The gods, who had no material bodies, were faced with the problem of creating material beings to people the earth. Following the line of thought indicated above, the first created human being was a female. The gods themselves were males, and one of their number supplied the male element for the primary pair that produced the human species. This is the main scheme in the myth of human creation that was subsequently carried to the various island groups, but, in the course of time, the original story suffered local variations and contradictions.

The New Zealand version states that the major gods consulted as to how the human species should be created. The god Tane was delegated to mold some red earth at Kurawaka into the form of a woman. The figure was vitalized into the first human being. Blood flowed through her veins, she breathed, sneezed, opened her eyes, and stood erect. She was named Hine-ahu-one, the Earth-formed-maid, the human mother of mankind.

Tane took the Earth-formed-maid to wife and begat a daughter named the Dawn-maiden. The incest page 49that is inevitable with a primary pair took place between Tane and his daughter. Offspring were produced and the populating of the world began.

In some versions, a character named Tiki takes the place of Tane as the male in the act of human creation with the Earth-formed-maid. Some authorities hold that Tiki was a term used to denote the virile power of Tane, but in other groups Tiki was regarded as the first human male. Hence carvings in human form are termed tiki in memory of the first man. In Mangareva, where Tane is demoted to the position of a fisherman, Tiki appears as the grandson of the god Tangaroa, and he molds the first woman out of earth at Ara-kovitiviti. The name given to her is Hina-one (Earth-maid), which corresponds to the New Zealand name. In Tahiti, a similar myth occurs with Ti'i (Tiki) and Hina-one, but this has been overlaid by later versions. In Hawaii, the god Kane (Tane) and his colleagues form a man and a woman out of earth, but the general context of the story shows that the native historian had been influenced by the introduced Biblical version of creation. Another Hawaiian version, however, pairs Ki'i (Tiki) with a female named La'ila'i, as the progenitors of mankind. In the Tuamotu version, both Tiki and his wife have human ancestors. In spite of variations, the prevailing principle is that man was born of a woman created from page 50earth and that the male parent was a god. Thus the New Zealanders say that the material side of man is derived from the human female ancestor, and rank, prestige, and a spark of divinity are derived from the divine male ancestor.

The myth of the Earth-formed-maid is not present in the west, in Samoa and Tonga. Here man was regarded as having developed from worms and maggots that, in turn, were developed from a rotting vine. Hence the creation of man was attributed in the west to a crude form of evolution, whereas in the rest of Polynesia it was attributed to a special creation.