As to Atia-te-varinga-nui, or Atia, as it is called in other chants, I have already shown the probability that this is India. The second name Avaiki-te-varinga, is probably Java. Iti-nui (Whiti-nui in Maori) may be one of the Maori Tawhitis, and from its position may be one of the Indonesian Islands, but it is more probably Fiji, though, at the same time if this is so, it should not precede the two following names. Papua is some island north of Fiji which cannot be identified—it is not New Guinea, as might be supposed by the similarity of names, because, that name is Malayan, and is descriptive of the woolly-haired Papuans who dwell there, and has been given long since the Polynesians left Indonesia. Papua is found in Rarotonga and other places as a local name.[1] Enua-kura—the land of red feathers—I suggest, may refer to New Guinea—the red feathers, so very highly prized by all Polynesians being those of the Bird of Paradise. Avaiki is the Savai'i of the Samoan group, as Kupolu is Upolu, and Manuka, Manu'a, of the same group. This recitation describes the route of the migration to which both Maori and Rarotongan belong, the last named place being the little island from which Makea Karika emigrated to Rarotonga circa 1250.
The Samoans have no "official log-book" of their migrations so far as I am aware, and the names of ancient dwelling-places of their ancestors are very few. The name of their "spirit land," as of the Tongans, is Pulotu, which is not known to other branches of the race—except indeed in Fiji, where it is found under the variant "Mbulotu." If this is the name for the "spirit land," it is obviously also the name for their ancestral home in the far west, for we have already seen that the Samoan belief is identical with that of the other branches as to the flight of the
- ↑ In the Marquesas it means "a garden."
