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.