Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/201

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SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE RACE
189

In Tangiia's old age, Karika urged him to join in a voyage to Iva to help obtain a celebrated canoe named "Pata"; but he declined, though some of his people went with Karika, who left his son Puta-i-te-tai in Tangiia's care. The Iva people laid a plot to kill Ngati-Tangiia, but they being warned in time escaped back to Rarotonga, whilst Karika was killed.

The history of Karika, mentioned above, has been given in the Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. i, p. 70. The events therein related regarding the settlement of Rarotonga will not be found to agree exactly with those which are given in the Native History from which this is compiled, but after all, the differences are not great; it is known that Karika came from Samoa, and in the records of the Manu'a island of that group, his name is preserved, under the form of 'Ali'a, who, acccording to traditions collected by the Rev. J. Powell, edited by Dr. Fraser, and published in the "Transactions of the Royal Society" of New South Wales, vol. for 1891, p. 138, lived about twenty-three generations, or reigns ago. The table of kings, not being wholly a genealogy, cannot be compared with those of Rarotonga, but still, the Manu'a tables, such as they are ought not to differ greatly. We find from Rarotonga history that Karika flourished twenty-four generations ago, and that there are twenty-three names on the Manu'a list—sufficiently near to allow of their being the same individual.

The Rarotonga accounts however, make Karika's father and mother to have been named Eaa and Ueuenuku; the Manu'a (Samoan) accounts give them as Le Lolonga and Auia-luma. The ancestors preceding Le Lolonga are also quite different to those in the Rarotonga account (Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 1, p. 70). This leads me to infer the probability of 'Ali'a having been interpolated