Savai'i. Sa and Uii were scattered far and wide to all lands." The above story is eponymous in so much as it attempts to assign an origin to the names of the three principal Samoan islands. But the interest in this connection is in showing the Samoan knowledge of Tawhaki.
Another story says that Tafa'i lived at Le Itu-o-Tane, or the north coast of Savai'i. Possibly this may have been the man, not the god named above.
The group of people of whom Tawhaki is the most distinguished, is also well-known to Hawaiian tradition as the following will show: but in considering their place in history we must not lose sight of what Fornander has said on this subject, for he has probably studied Hawaiian history more closely than others. His belief was that the group of people—Kai-tangata, Hema, Tawhaki, Wahieroa, and Rata (all Maori ancestors)—has been engrafted on the Hawaiian genealogies after the arrival of the Southern Polynesians in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In this I think he is right; for the position assigned them on Hawaiian genealogies is contradicted both by Maori and Rarotonga history, but at the same time the Hawaiian account of them is very precise, as the following notes given to me by Dr. N. B. Emerson will show:—
"Puna (Maori Punga) and Hema were both sons of Ai-kanaka (Maori, Kai-tangata), and were born in Hawaii-ku-uli, at Kau-iki, Maui island. Hema died in Kahiki (Tahiti). The following old chant has reference to him, (in the translation the names are spelt as in Maori):—
Loa'a Hema, lilo i ka 'A'aia,
Haule i Kahiki, i Kapakapa-kaua,
Waiho ai i Ulu-paupau.
