Hawaii - James Michener [72]
The men of Havaiki, seeing for the first time the incredible fury of which their new land was capable, sat awestruck in their canoe and watched for a long time the cataclysm that had destroyed their home; but a gust of wind, stronger than the rest, carried down from the crest of the volcano a wisp of hair, spun by the breezes from the molten lava, and Teroro caught the hair and held it aloft, where the sun played on it, and he saw that it was the hair which the strange woman in the forest had worn, and he announced: "It was the goddess Pere. She came not to frighten us but to warn us. We did not understand."
His words gave the people in the canoe great hope, for if the goddess had thought enough of her erring people to warn them, she must retain some love for them; and all was not lost. This hair of Pere was given to the king as an omen, and he placed it upon the neck of the only remaining bred sow, because if this animal did not live and deliver her litter it would be as bad an omen as the volcano.
In this manner, but bearing only half the cargo with which they had arrived, and a bred sow clothed in Pere's hair, the voyagers started for a new home; and Pa and Mato had chosen wisely, for they led their companions around the southern tip of the island and up the western coast until they found fine land, with soil that could be tilled, and water, and it was here that the settlement of Havaiki began in earnest, with new fields and a new temple built without sacrifices. When the sow threw her litter, the king himself watched over the young pigs, and when the largest and strongest reached a size at which he could have been eaten--and mouths had begun to water for the taste of roast pig--the king and old Tupuna carried the pig reverently to the new temple and sacrificed it to Tane. From then on the community prospered.
WHEN THE SETTLEMENT was established, Tupuna took the steps which were to give it the characteristics which marked it permanently. He said one day to the king, "Soon I shall follow Teura, but before I go upon the rainbow, we ought to protect the life of our people. It is not good that men roam freely everywhere, and live without restraint."
“For a few months, pernaps,” tne priest argued. "Just as the years pass, unless a community has fixed laws, and patterns which bind people into their appointed place, life is no good."
"But this is a new land," Teroro reasoned.
"It is in a new land that customs are most necessary," the priest warned, and the king supported him, and out of their discussions the tabus were established.
"Each man lives between an upper, which gives mana, and a lower, which drains mana from him," Tupuna explained in words that would never be forgotten. "Therefore a man must plead with the upper to send him mana and must protect himself from the lower, which steals mana from him. That is why no man should permit a slave to touch him, or to pass upon his shadow, or to see his food, for a slave can drain away a man's entire mana in an instant, for a slave has no mana.
"The way for a man to obtain mana is to obey his king, for it is the king alone who can bring us mana directly from the gods. Therefore no man may touch tie king, or the garment of the king, or the shadow of the king, or in any way steal his mana. To break this tabu is death." Tupuna then enumerated more than five dozen additional tabus which protected the king in his suspension between the upper gods and the lower men: his spittle may not be touched; his excrement must be buried at night in a secret place; his food