Land Tenure in the Cook Islands
The commoner (unga or tangata rikiriki)
The commoner (unga or tangata rikiriki)
The young unmarried men, the untitled married men, and even many untitled heads of households were known as unga. page 43 There has been some controversy regarding the origin of this word and regarding the best English equivalent with which it may be translated. The words ‘slave’ and ‘serf’ have frequently been used but these do not seem appropriate. Perhaps the best definition is that given by Gill which concerns an analogy with the indigenous arrowroot (tacca pinnatifida), which has one or two large tuberous roots surrounded by many smaller ones. ‘To the highly imaginative native mind,’ says Dr Gill, ‘the large tubers symbolize the chief or chiefs; the smaller ones the landed proprietors owing allegiance to, and by blood related to, the chief or chiefs. But besides these, there are a great number of tiny tubers called unga, representing the serfs, or “little people” (tangata rikiriki) as they are often called i.e. people of no account whatever!’ He goes on to note that derivatives of the word unga are used to describe such things as grains of earth and crumbs of food, and that the underlying idea is that of ‘an insignificant grain or unit’.1 The word also refers to the hermit crab and it is not uncommon for informants today to interpret it (when used for people) as deriving from the fact that the commoner, like the hermit crab, lived in the shelter of somebody else's house. However, Gill claimed over a hundred years ago that this was a modern corruption.2
1 Gill, JPS 20:128.
2 Ibid. While vernacular references to unga are generally in respect of ordinary untitled men (e.g. Terei, Tuatua Taito 37) there are some instances in later sources where the word was used to denote under-privileged commoners (e.g. by Pa Ariki, NZPP A3(b) 1903:9), and it is possible that the meaning of the word was modified to some extent as a corollary of the rise in chiefly power in the nineteenth century.
1 Gill, JPS 20:129. By ‘land owner’ he appears to mean the holder of the relevant title.
2 Gill, Gems… 12.
3 Moss, JPS 3:24.
1 Gill, Life in the Southern Isles 34.