Authority

Authority within the family was exercised by the patrilineal head. In a group of related families occupying a subdistrict, the chief authority was exercised by the subdistrict chief (kairanga nuku), who consulted the heads page 152of families. In the tribal district, the chief authority was vested in the district chief (pava) who was the tribal chief unless the tribe was spread over more than one district. The district and subdistrict chiefs formed a council which attended not only to matters affecting land distribution but to all matters covering the welfare and interior economy of the tribe.

In important matters the tribal god was consulted, and his decisions, as made known by his priest, were implicitly obeyed. The tribal priest thus exercised considerable authority on the policy of the tribe. Twice the priests of Motoro saved sections of the Tongaiti tribe from extermination at the hands of the enraged Ngariki by oracular utterances decreeing banishment instead of death.

The behavior of the individual and the group was guided by custom. Established custom acted automatically and usually required no enforcement by might. Customs which were brought into operation on particular occasions, such as closed seasons, were discussed by the chiefs and inaugurated at the time decided upon. So with various activities such as public works, feasts, and war. During the occupation of Mangaia, however, a number of adjustments had to be made which resulted in conflict before they crystallized into established custom.

Public opinion condemned lawbreakers. Such condemnation might lead to loss of prestige and lack of support, but often the culprit's family and even his tribe felt bound to support their kinsman against outside punishment. The individual was responsible for the protection of his property and his honor and he initiated steps to punish an injury. Reprisals commonly depended on the respective status and power of the injured and the culprit. The injured person might call up his family and tribe to his assistance and, if the culprit was of another tribe, the trouble might end in war.

Punishment for infringement of tapus was supposed to be brought about automatically by the gods. The gods sometimes acted slowly and there was a tendency to consider accidents, disasters, arid sickness the results of actions long past. Sometimes the gods, if left to themselves, acted not at all. There was commonly a psychological punishment from the knowledge of guilt. Thus Manaune was made mad for a time by the gods because he killed his father. The human upholders of the divine laws were not always content to wait for punishment to come about by supernatural means. When Teaio, Lord of Mangaia, wore the scarlet hibiscus flowers in his ears in the prohibited sacred district of Keia, Mouna, the priest of Tane, killed him by a blow on the head.

Theft

The rights of individual ownership were fully recognized. Members of the same household and close relatives might have the use of things in com-page 153mon, but in spite of that the real owner was always recognized. A relative might borrow a net or a canoe but he asked the owner for the loan of the article. The taro in the family cultivation and the fruit of trees on family land were the property of the owners of the land. The person taking property that did not belong to him was guilty of theft (keia).

The most common object of theft was taro. Refugees hiding in the makatea risked their lives by going down into the taro patches at night. The owners often paid surprise visits at night to their cultivations to protect their property. Sometimes houses built on poles were elevated above a taro patch, and members of the family lived there to guard their property. The uneven distribution of land between the conquerors and the conquered led to considerable thieving on the part of those who had little cultivable land in the puna divisions. In addition, a few people seem to have preferred the risk. of stealing to the labor of cultivating sufficient supplies for themselves.

The owner of a cultivation dealt summarily with any thief that he caught. If he got a chance, he speared him. One owner is recorded as having speared no less than five thieves, whose corpses he laid out beside his cultivation as a warning to others. Because of the severity of the punishment, it is evident that the thieves were of the conquered tribe or men of no standing and that the landholders, on the other hand, belonged to the tribe in power. Capital punishment under these circumstances could be summarily inflicted without leading to reprisals.

An inveterate taro thief related by marriage to a great chief caused a good deal of trouble within the tribe by his depredations. As killing him might have led to trouble, the owners of the raided cultivations adopted the plan of making the chief responsible for the sins of his kinsmen. They raided the chief's cultivations to make up for the taro stolen, and the chief could not gainsay the justice of the action. He admonished his kinsman without avail. At last, in rage, he tied him hand and foot and thrust him down a deep chasm. The thief was not killed by the fall but managed to loosen his bonds and escape. However, a series of thefts leading to another raid on the chief's cultivation exasperated the chief so much that he slew his kinsman.

An incantation for the success of thieves (tangata kekeia) associated with Mata-ia-nuku, Utuutu-roroa, and Avaava-roroa as patron gods or spirits, recorded in full by Gill (6, pp. 150-151), was used by Raoa, the chief of a plundering tribal remnant.

The incantation was intended to cause a prolonged slumber not only to the occupants but even to the house which was to be robbed. After the line, "Tamoe i te au mea katoa" (Cause all things to sleep), the incantation causes sleep individually to the owner, the insects, beetles, earwigs, and ants inhabiting the house. Then the inanimate parts of the house are put to sleep—the grass flooring, supporting posts, ridgepole, rafters, purlins, thatch rafters, eaves, battens, roof ridging, reed walls, and thatch. Naturally, the users of such a thorough soporific were "famous for their success."

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Adultery

Although relationships between the unmarried were governed by fewer inhibitions and restrictions than in Western culture, the tapus that applied to married people were equally if not more strict. Adultery was termed 'akaturi, a term which had a wider connotation but which in ordinary speech held the specific signification.

The punishment of adultery, which was condemned by public opinion, depended on the possibility of its application. A powerful chief might like the wife of a serf or a commoner, and the injured husband would be unable to exact redress. A chief might be so powerful that a weaker chief would deem it expedient not to attempt active reprisal.

Ngauta, Lord of Mangaia, carried on a love affair with the wife of Ngoengoe, son of Akaina. Akaina, who lay sick to death, had been Ngauta's main support (toko) in his military campaigns. The injured husband complained to his father, who wept over his son's wrongs and coached his son to restrain his grief for his death and to wait until Ngauta came to pay his respects to his dead comrade-in-arms, when the son was to lie on the body of his father, and, wailing, was to repeat the words, "Ah, the teaching of my father Akaina, I also am from Tonga!" Tonga was the locality in which Ngoengoe and his wife lived. After Akaina's death the plan was duly carried out. Ngauta heard, and after pressing his nose against that of the corpse, he said, "So he is of the tribe of Akaina!" Thus at a time when Ngauta was deeply stirred, he learned that the husband of the woman with whom he was having a liaison was the son of his old comrade. The Lord of Mangaia was shamed before the dead and ceased his attentions to the wife of Ngoengoe.

The usual form of punishment ('akatea) was the confiscation of movable goods. The family of the injured husband raided the correspondent's property. All such possessions as bark cloth were confiscated, the taro of the cultivation was dug up, and the fruit trees were denuded. The corespondent was left with a bare hut and bare land. The food supplies were so drastically dealt with that the punishment was keenly felt.

A more severe punishment was the actual confiscation of land. The death penalty was sometimes inflicted if the injured husband felt his tribe strong enough to withstand the war that was bound to follow.

Vaarua, a junior collateral relative of Koroa, Lord of Mangaia, influenced by jealousy of his senior cousin who held more power and a greater number of women attendants, stole one of Koroa's wives. As Koroa was the chief of the district in which Vaarua lived, Koroa drove him out of the district and gave his land to others.

Te-uanuku, while Lord of Mangaia, carried on a liaison with the wife of an Ngariki chief named Raei. Raei could not kill the offender, as they were both worshipers of Motoro, so he intrigued with the Tongaiti tribe for the murder of Te-uanuku.

It is not clear whether injured wives had any customary redress. They seem usually to have vented their wrath in words and returned to the homes of their parents.

In Mangaia, if a fish dropped from the hook once as it was being lifted page 155out of the water by a fisherman it was merely annoying, but if it dropped more than twice it was a sign of marital infidelity ashore.

Incest

The first recorded instance of incest is that of the god Rongo with his own daughter Tavake, to whose union the Ngariki attribute their origin. It was maintained that cases of mother and son incest had subsequently occurred. It may be that this form of incest was held on a plane with illicit relations between a son and a young stepmother. The same punishment, which consisted of publicly disgracing the offender, was meted out for both offenses. The son's hair was cut off and he was taken from village to village around the island. Again and again, after beating a wooden gong (pate) to draw the people together, he publicly announced the crime he had committed, and the people threw filth at him. My informant Aiteina maintained that this procedure was an ancient custom, but the public announcements and the throwing of filth seem foreign to Polynesian psychology.

Murder

The taking of life during a state of war was regarded as a justifiable means for gaining an end, as it is now by civilized peoples. After the drum of peace was sounded, the taking of human life was theoretically prohibited. Exceptions, however, occurred as in other cultures. People were occasionally killed in punishment for theft, for adultery, and for breaking laws or religious prohibitions. Some tribes were liable to be drawn upon for religious purposes. Peace was sometimes ended by the slaying of a human sacrifice to Rongo "to cut the rule" (kia motu te 'au) of the party in power.

The killings which took place during a period of peace were termed ta rikiriki, or briefly, tariki. Both terms mean "little killings," in contrast with the wholesale killing of war (ta tamaki). The tariki were condemned by public opinion. They disturbed the established rule and led to reprisals which ended in war. Killings which may be regarded as capital punishment for breaking the laws and customs of society were considered justifiable, but the indiscriminate killings due to passion, grudges, and ambition were regarded as murder and tariki came to convey that idea. The blood that was shed (te toto ta'e) had to be avenged. In the carrying out of punishment, a conflict occurred between right and might. The punishment of the murderer devolved upon the relatives of the murdered person. Theoretically, the relatives of the murderer should offer no opposition to justice. If the family of the murderer was weak and had no status, it was useless for them to withstand a powerful family seeking vengeance; and justice took its course. page 156If, on the other hand, the positions were reversed, it was equally useless for a weak family to seek redress, and justice lapsed. If both families were powerful, the only recourse was war.

Public opinion, however, held that the blood of the murdered man followed the murderer (ka aru te toto) and exercised an evil effect upon his family which might extend to his whole tribe (kopu). Some murderers were said to have been discovered through the depletion of their families by natural deaths. The deaths led to inquiries within the family and the tribe and the discovery that a member had been guilty of committing murder. The gradual falling off of the family and the tribe could not be stayed until recompense had been made. The murderer was made known and delivered up to justice, which condemned him to capital punishment. Under such conditions the tribe considered that it was better for one man to die than that deaths in the tribe should continue.

The killing of relatives during peace (ta atua, "killing the god") was particularly abhorred. The relatives to whom the ta atua applied were evidently paternal relatives who worshiped the same tribal god. The god inflicted a blood curse upon the murderer and his family. Though the blood curse was usually manifested by fatal sicknesses, it also led to depletions by accident and a diminishing of vigor which led to death in battle. The blood curse also applied to the killing of maternal relatives who served other gods. Political aspirants avoided the blood curse by getting members of an outside tribe to commit murders of relatives for them. Potai, of the Ngariki, held the head of his uncle Namu while a member of the Tongaiti tribe struck the fatal blow. Potai did not actually shed his uncle's blood.

If a murderer was condemned by his own people, they refused to fight for him. When the murdered man's tribe came to seek vengeance they formed up in battle array in a formal mnaner, but blows and thrusts were made perfunctorily as a matter of form. Though the murderer's family were behind him, they made no effort to protect him. This is exemplified in the story of the murderer Moerangi (p. 160).

The slaying of relatives in war was not murder. As relatives on opposing sides were in different tribes serving different gods, the blood curse could not strictly operate because the killing was not ta atua.

An inconsistency is apparent between attributing the blood curse to the slaying of a worshiper of the same god (ta atua) and extending it to any murder (tariki). It is evident that the blood curse by a tribal god was instituted for promoting the unity and solidarity of the tribe by prohibiting murders within the tribe. In applying it, however, to blood relatives, the fear of its consequences extended to relatives who had been adopted into other tribes and served other gods. Although such an extension was a page 157natural expression of close kinship, which was natural during peace, it interfered with tribal solidarity if carried out during war. A special adjustment had to be made which placed the tribal bond before the family tie during war. The extension of the blood curse to include the murder of those not closely related was another adjustment to prevent murders which destroyed peace and ended in war.