Sailors and Traders

Abstract

Louise Deeley of SIRC, who helped in so many invaluable ways from start to finish in the production of the book.Hawaiki, the legendary homeland of the Maori (possibly Rarotonga, Cook Islands, or Ra'iatea, Society Islands), to search for a southern continent-centuries later, another great navigator, James Cook, was given the same task.Kupe decided to seek the fish of Maui (Te Ika a Maui).He found it petrified as Aotearoa and spent two generations exploring both islands before returning to Hawaiki with the news.Another twenty generations passed, so the folktale goes, before people in a double canoe left Hawaiki to follow "the path" (sailing directions) of Kupe.They did so, Hohepa interprets, to take their families away from the hunger and wars over resources in Hawaiki, which had suffered droughts, perhaps from a severe El Niño.Five generations afterward, successive fleets of canoes made voyages of over 1,600 miles from Hawaiki to Aotearoa.These people eventually dispersed over Aotearoa, as recounted in Maori folklore and genealogy, to occupy tribal territories, some of which carried the names of great canoes.The remembrances of voyages of founding seafarers have been preserved in other forms elsewhere in the Pacific.Joel Bonnemaison discusses the links between canoes, territories, ancestors, and people in southern Vanuatu. 4 Each territory is identified with a canoe, as is the social organization.The descendants of those who occupied the front of the canoe had special status (lords).The helmsman was the captain and, when ashore, a chief.This concept and the memories of the community are carried onward to new territories on migration, thereby combining the essential "rootedness" to an original homeland with the mobility of voyaging.Another component of voyage-related myths lies in the celestial dome covering the Pacific.The stars, sun, planets, moon, and even comets appear in the stories of the gods of Oceania.The oral transmission of Tahitian myths, for example, shows detailed astronomical observations. 5Ta'urua (Venus) prepares a canoe and sails west to dwell with his wife, Rua-o-mere (Capricornus).In Kiribati the myth of the courtship of Nei Auti (Pleiades) and Rimwimata (Antares) sees them engage in an endless race with each other across the sky.Their risings mark the seasons for good and bad voyaging (see chapter 2).The many long and convoluted accounts reciting apparent movements of godlike celestial bodies may have aide-mémoire functions in the oral traditions of Pacific Island navigators.Arthur Grimble, writing in 1931, confirms, "If you want to find an expert on stars you must ask for a tiaborau or navigator." 6There are many such myths and interpretations.There are also traditions and images of ships and the sea that have been carried by sailors and shared and assimilated among nationalities.Despite technological changes some

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