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Mangaia (traditionally known as Auau Enua, which means terraced) is the most southerly of the Cook Islands and the second largest, after Rarotonga. Geologists estimate the island is at least 18 million years old, making it the oldest in the Pacific. It rises 4750 m (15,600 ft) above the ocean floor and has a land area of 51.8 km2. It has a central volcanic plateau and, like many of the southern Cook Islands, it is surrounded by a high ring of cliffs of fossil coral 60 m (200 ft) high, known as the makatea. The highest point is Rangi-motia, 169 m above sea level, near the centre of the island. Lake Tiriara is a body of fresh water in the south. The population of Mangaia comprises about 700 people. The capital is the village of Oneroa, on the west coast, containing about half the population. There are two more villages, Tamarua in the south and Ivirua in the northeast. Traditionally, the island has been subdivided into six districts or puna headed by district chiefs or pava, which are very nearly sectors meeting at the highest point near the center of the island, Rangi-motia.. The districts are, as on some other islands of the Lower Cook Islands, further subdivided into 38 traditional sub-districts called tapere. In the Cook Islands constitution however, the six districts are listed as tapere
MANGAIA.
Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 303, 24 December 1907, Page 3MANGAIA. (Otago Witness, 12 July 1900)
Mangaia History
History----- The mangaian have an unusual legend of their early History.
Most POLYNESIAN islands have some sort of legend about a great ancestor arriving on a fantastic canoe, but not the Mangaians.
Nobody sailed from anywhere to become mangaians first settlers.
Rangi. Mokoiro, and Akatauira the three sons of the God Rongo, father of Mangaia simply lifted the island up, from the deep, becoming its first settlers and the ancestors of the Nga Ariki Tribes.
The traditional name of the island was AU'A'U literally terraced--- named for the steps of Temakatea) short for A'U A' U O Rongo Kite Ao Marama. ( Big Trraced Land of Rongo In The World OF Daylight.The islands current name is comparatively new,it short for a name bestowed by Tamaeu, an Aitutakian who arrived on Mangaia 1775.Mangaia mean Peace Of Temporal Power, the name relates to 42 battlers between the islands various groups and the Peace that was finally, established when one leader eventually achieved Mangaia ( Power) over the whole island.
Two years later JAMES Cook claimed the European discovery of Mangaia during his second Pacific Voyage.
He arrived 29th March 1777, but the mangaians gave him a frosty welcome, so Cook sailed North to find a friendlier greetings at Atiu.
Uniquely in the Cook Islands, cannibalism had already been outlawed by the time the Missionaries turned up in 1823.
The great Mangaian chief Mautara had banned the practise almost a century before since most mangaians were related in some way, either by blood or marriage.
Mautara decided that family harmony was, probably no best served by the custom of serving up, your siblings for dinner.
Nevertheless the missionaries were not given, the warmest of reception when they first arrived.
The pioneering missionary John Williams stumbled across the island in 1823, while he was searching for Rarotonga.
He attempted to set Polynesian missionaries ashore but the Mangaians attacked them, so Williams promptly dropped the idea and sailed out again.
A couple of missionaries from Tahaa, ( in present day POLYNESIAN ) landed in 1824, and although they were fairly inept their successors, the Rarotongan Preacher Maretu eventually had more success. Maretus book Cannibals and Converts describes mangaian's Conversion to Christianity, like many of the outer islands, Mangaia is struggling with an ongoing population decline.
Since the mid 1970s the population of the island stable for sometimes at around 2000, has fallen to almost a third of that, and so far the trend shows no sign of reversing.
The Ancient island of Mangaia is thought to be the older island in the SOUTH PACIFIC, and it's a place where you certainly feel the centuries stretching back, Vast circular Towers of Makatea ( raised fossilised coral reef) ring the island fertile central, valleys, in some places dropping down in sheer 60 m cliffs and there are several scenic lookouts where you can admire uninterrupted views across to the highest peak on the island
Rangimotia.
It's a proud of a mysterious island, renowned for its unique culture and sense of independence, and there are many ancient MARAE ( ancient meeting grounds) to discover, as well as some of the finest Missionaries era churches in the Cook Islands, but like the other islands of the southern group.
Mangaia is most famous for its dramatic cave systems especially the massive burial chamber, of Te Rua Rere and the labyrinthine Tuatini Caves.
It's also rumous a haunted island the spirits of ancient ancestors are believed to walk aboard on the island once the sunsets.
And many locals won't venture into the musky Makatea after Dark. Gracious TANGI KE rava
outsiders perspective of mangaia
Secrets of Cook Islands underworld
CRAIG TANSLEY"So you wanna see my cave?" Clarke Mautairi may one day be the chief of his village but for now he's just its mechanic, resplendent in greasy, grey overalls, still stinking of busted sumps and year-old motor oil. You could call him a cave guide, too, but then again the last tourist who asked to see his cave came through three months ago - or was it four; he can't recall exactly - and that's hardly going to feed his family.
The island of Mangaia is full of caves. There are hundreds of them on an island so small you can circumnavigate it in an hour but there are no "official" tours and certainly no lighting, handrails or safety helmets; to look through them you'll have to find the family whose land they're on and ask for a personal tour. Finding them is easy, though: just ask around - everyone knows everyone's business here.
"It's probably best if I drive us there," Mautairi says, commandeering my rental scooter. He has a point - there are no bitumen roads on Mangaia. The goats, chooks and pigs of the island prefer it that way and they're the ones that count - they outnumber people 10 to one. Livestock wander narrow, dusty dirt tracks at will, often setting up camp in the middle.
Technically, that has to be pretty dangerous but we won't get above 30kmh and, besides, the island's two police officers are far too busy fishing to move on pesky vagrants. Mautairi, it appears, is on a first-name basis with every goat, rooster and pig we motor past. "That's mine," he says, pointing to a particularly handsome "billy". "That's Taoi's pig - you know, the man you met yesterday." News spreads pretty darn fast on an island of 500.
It's not far off dark but that matters little - where we're going will be pitch black. In the muggy dusk, the high cliffs of makatea - or fossilised coral - look imposing and ghostly as we drive through the lush taro plantations of the island's interior.
The entrance to Mautairi's family cave - dubbed Tuatini and said to be the island's grandest - is up among the razor-sharp coral. We struggle down an overgrown muddy track, our tiny wheels slipping and sliding.
Mautairi hacks at a makeshift path with a machete and we scrape through with spiderwebs in our hair to climb an ancient stairway in the cliffs. Mautairi pauses to check two tiny torches. "You don't want to get stuck in here," he warns. "I'm the only one who comes in here, so they wouldn't even find our bodies. A tourist came in by himself. I found him two days later - man, he was scared."
I've dressed for tight, muddy tunnels but the beam from our torches illuminates a subterranean Disneyland, a stunning series of grand chambers framed by exquisitely formed stalactites and stalagmites that continue as far as the torchlight reveals.
For millions of years these formations have slowly evolved, seen by only a few outsiders. Mautairi's ancestors spent time inside and their cooking instruments litter the ground, along with fish hooks and the candlenuts they used to light their way.
They also left something else here: themselves. Mautairi shows me their grotesque, grinning skulls arranged in neatly stacked burial chambers.
Below my feet, prehistoric purple crabs scurry drunkenly into the shadows. The chambers expand the further we walk, with the patterns becoming more intricate. Each chamber leads off to another but only Mautairi knows the way.
His uncle used to come here. When Mautairi told him he wanted to show visitors through the family caves, his uncle told him that, like him, he must learn his way back out by leaving leaves shaped like arrows at regular intervals. Mautairi was terrified. At first he ventured no further than a few metres but now he says the cave feels like a second home.
Last year he took an American cave specialist in the same direction for four hours and still didn't reach the end. They only returned when their torch batteries began to falter. "The air got thin and hard to breathe and the water dripping from the ceiling became completely salty," Mautairi says. "We were right under the ocean. No one's ever been right to the end. Maybe it doesn't end?"
Mangaia is the closest of the Cook Islands to Rarotonga, the main island, yet it is little known. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that until 2009, it had a yearly tourist marketing budget of $86.
"We couldn't even afford pencils for the year," says the part-time tourism officer, Taoi Nooroa. Whatever the case, Mangaia used to receive just two tourists a month. But times are changing fast. These days, there's often two a week.
Life is simple on Mangaia. Don't expect fancy restaurants - although a new four-star villa has just opened, with a restaurant promised for 2012 - and the island has just one bar, called Babe's, which is only open Friday and Saturday nights (darts night, on Friday, is the pick). Locals live in three tiny villages and fish each day to feed their families. Outside these areas there's nothing but wandering animals and idyllic, empty beaches. And caves.
While Mautairi's cave may have a reputation as Mangaia's grandest, everyone on the island agrees: Maui Perau's cave is the most exciting. Perau is the island's school-bus driver. Each morning he flashes me a maniacal grin as he drives past, both hands off the wheel and waving madly like a long-lost relative. When I meet him outside his family cave - Te Rua Rere - he high-fives me, tells me I'm his first client in three months and says he has no idea what to expect inside.
Within a few metres of the entrance, Perau shows me some of his ancectors' skulls. "Hey bro, haven't seen you around, what you been up to?" Perau asks of a toothy skeleton. We enter an amphitheatre-like chamber and the stalactites and stalagmites are as arresting as Tuatini's. As we move forward, the chamber narrows to a tiny passage. "From this point on, it gets real hard," Perau giggles.
We cling to rocks, balancing on thin precipices above drops impossible to calculate. Perau points out overhangs to use for grip, then clambers away into the dark. "Watch out round here," he says. "The roof fell in on me a few months ago. Lucky I was standing just to the side and I'm not too sure how to get through now." We climb on, propping each other up, barely hanging on.
"There used to be a ladder here but it fell down and there's no way I'm dragging another ladder all the way in again." There's a raw kind of excitement to getting through Te Rua Rere; while Perau's not entirely reckless, he does let me discover my own way through these steep, narrow chambers.
On numerous occasions, I'm forced to back down and start again, hanging on for dear life. When we make it out to perfect sunshine, I feel like I've won a battle.
But Te Rua Rere isn't conquered yet. The only way back out to the top of the high cliffs of makatea surrounding us is by climbing 30 metres up the roots of an enormous banyan tree. "I call this the widow maker," Perau says. The makatea is sharp - when it touches my skin I feel it split. I stumble my way up, keeping hold of the thick vine - as wide as a man's thigh - hands searching for somewhere on the makatea to stop me spinning.
At the top, Perau asks me to join him on a descent of Mangaia's most revered cave, whose name relates to a part of a woman's body. He tells me we will take ropes and drop 30 metres into pure blackness in the hour before dawn. When we make our way up the cave's main chamber the rising sun will light our way, rising above our exit point beside a lagoon, illuminating the cave's walls.
That night I'm convinced by fishermen I meet at a barbecue to avoid the notorious cave. But there are others on Mangaia to conquer: Piri Te Umeume, Tautua, Toru A Puru and Kauvava are some. But who knows, perhaps there's a cave even more spectacular than Tuatini and more challenging than Te Rua Rere; one that's never been seen by a traveller. All you need do is find a family member to lead the way.
The writer travelled courtesy of Cook Islands Tourism.
The fishing's great
Climb on a specially built outrigger canoe (with an outboard) and take on Mangaia's tricky harbour for a deep-sea fishing charter with a difference. You might be lucky enough to have island policeman Aerenta Matapo take you out. He's pulled in a 235-kilogram marlin on a hand line. Your accommodation operator can organise a charter for you.
Trip notes
Getting there
Air New Zealand flies to Rarotonga from Sydney direct every Saturday and via New Zealand most days, airnz.co.nz. Air Rarotonga has 40-minute direct flights to Mangaia from Rarotonga three times a week for $NZ470 ($375) return, airraro.com.
Staying there
Mangaia Villas offers luxurious accommodation for $NZ375 a night. mangaiavillas.com. Self-contained rooms at Babe's Place cost $75 a night (single) or $120 a night (double), which includes all meals. babesplace.co.ck.
Caving there
For more information on caving in Mangaia, talk to your accommodation host or see cookislands.travel/mangaia or islandhoppervacations.com. Cave tours generally cost $30.
- Sydney Morning Herald
Mangaian personal review
1
Personal Review
by
Kenneth.S.Harry
ahbie11@hotmail.co.nz
Friday 22nd May 2013.
Ancestral Voices from Mangaia: A History of the Ancient Gods and Chiefs
Professor Michael P.J. Reilly (2009)
The Polynesian Society (Inc), Auckland, New Zealand.
Ti-o, ti-o; nanue, nanue
Tareki ta, tareki ta,
Tareki ta’i vaevae
Tareki ta.
Stretch out, stretch out,
Stretch out a leg
Stretch out (Reilly 2009: 259).2
Sometime in 1981 while browsing through the Tokoroa Public Library my father came to me with an open book entitled, The Lagoon is Lonely Now by Ronald Syme (1978). He showed me photos from the book while expressing the proudest countenance I had ever seen him display. He quietly said to me: ‘This is Mangaia, this is my island’. Not long after and for the next 32 years I began to look for, read, and examine all the publications I could find about Mangaia, my ancestral homeland.
Ancient Voices is indeed an academic text I expected no less from a Professor of Pacific, Maori and Indigenous Studies. It has been well researched over the same period that Reverend William Wyatt-Gill (1852-72) took to document his insider observations of post-European contact Mangaia during the 18th-19th centuries. I also accept Ancient Voices to be inside historical information.
I am pleased that Professor Reilly was able to utilise the voices of every day Mangaians from both the past and today in his research as there is good balance in his many descriptions and analysis. For example, using the Aronga Mana gives his work integrity, insight, and empathy for his research subjects. However, it is my personal view that he did not need to include Numangatini Ariki’s dream, which was denied by three Mangaian executives and Wyatt-Gill, the original receiver and scribe of the dream. Nevertheless, I could actually feel and hear my people directing the professor through the proverbial raei of Te Ua Mangaia: Ia orana e ta’i Ta’unga Korero o Auau Enua.
For want of a better statement, Ancient Voices is a complex but enjoyable read. Perhaps I found parts of Ancient Voices complicated in places because I may be tired from studying Mangaian history for as long as the professor. The many voices that have been gathered together to produce this remarkably in-depth text has successfully managed to bring together formally dispersed and current information to help me further understand what it meant to be Mangaian in the ancient world. Whether those former values and principles still apply today is unclear.
For example, it is clear that Auau Enua was created in Avaiki and raised completely whole into this world, which would mean that all Mangaians have ascended from Rangi and his brothers as indirectly supported in pre-Christian times by the practice of Te Ara Tangata or Maninitori (Wyatt-Gill 1876). With the arrival of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the journey continues upwards but in self agency only.
Therefore, it may have been more useful and interesting to examine the roles and responsibilities of today’s Aronga Mana in identifying how they manage the relations between my ancestral homeland and the God of Israel to describe how every day Mangaians develop and shine on the global stage. After all, the spiritual realm has been integral and intimate to the Mangaian way of life since Varimatetakere.
It seems to me that my ancestors (or should I say descendants?) were not always an entirely peaceful people. A monarch strolling into a hut to have sex with someone else’s wife is hardly mangaia; or is it? Are my people more politically correct today for the sake of peace? Have they become spiritually lazy on our beautiful island? Have we lost the heart to challenge our situation in life like our descendants? Therefore, what was the purpose of Rangi and his brothers bringing us out of Avaiki? Was it not to unwound themselves and reach out to their fullest potential? My Mangaian spirit prompts me to further assume that Pangemiro Ariki had more in his heart for his people than everlasting peace on te nga auau (terraces). Are we not supposed to be working and preparing in this life to meet the God of Israel in the next life to enjoy eternal peace?
In Numangatini Ariki’s 1870 exhortation, he instructs the Aronga Mana to "…take good heed of the Word of God…unite to make it grow. Let no evil spring up in your day. Take care of my missionaries and pastors…and cherish the Word of God. Then you will prosper body and soul" (Reilly 2009: 125). 3
Ancient Voices may have been more complete with a Part III (The Progress of Community?) that could have analysed post Christian contact Mangaia - and in particular the Valley of Tears briefly mentioned (2009: 267) - in order to examine such issues as contemporary socialisation processes amongst Mangaians, and amongst women and children in particular, from the arrival of Christianity until the present day; economic, political and social development on the island, or a simple description on how the Aronga Mana is developing the Word of God to bring prosperity to the land, which in Mangaian society is the core of the body and soul.
Even more interesting is the discussion with the Kavana of the former Iku Katau o Rongo about the concept of tama u a, which is the placement of the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the thigh of the Aronga Mana to be cherished like a baby for all eternity (Reilly 2009: 90-91). Is the concept of tama u a applied by Mangaians in their everyday lives especially with regards to our women and children? Does the church itself cherish Mangaia enough to allow its people to grow, learn, make mistakes, repent, and eventually be perfected to ascend into its eternal paradisiacal destination?
When I was a small boy my father cradled me in his thigh as well. Eventually he transferred me to his shoulders before allowing me to walk and run. But I was not on the ground long before he introduced me to bicycles followed by motor vehicles. This is the true meaning of tama u a, which is about my own people helping each other as we journey from Avaiki to Heaven to be perfected tuarangi. In other words, it is about freewill and open expression regardless of whether it is appropriate or unhelpful. Tama u a is not about restricting progress so that we remain in the thigh while other races of people are flying to the moon and back.
Has the present day Aronga Mana become so peaceful that some of them now require New Zealand medical care for modern day ailments acquired through excess consumption, or a lack of spiritual pain and suffering to improve the lives of its people – which were the ancient rationale behind challenges to the mangaia - albeit for a short time? After all, if there is no challenge to the status quo then there is no pain and suffering; and if there are no trials and tribulations in Mangaia or amongst Mangaians then what is the purpose of one’s life? What are the hopes and dreams of Mangaians in the 21st century? What challenges are we ready to pursue as a recognised and well researched people?
What strategic alliances has Mangaia made on the global stage that will enable us to stretch ourselves beyond our own intellectual abilities? How has the Aronga Mana used its ancient rights, autonomy and privileges to utilise external ‘friends’ to improve the individual’s life in Mangaia? Have the many universities who have funded researchers to research my homeland offered scholarships to my young warriors and xenas? Has the uku kikau of relevant international sustainable development programmes been extended to the Aronga Mana so that they may further continue to improve the lives of our people on Mangaia? Or are we just a simple people living on the merits of our descendants out of fear?
Towards the end of Ancient Voices is an interesting section on Sacrifices (2009: 237-264) in which the author describes and analyses the processes involved in ending a sitting Ariki’s reign and establishing a new monarch to rule over Mangaia, which I found inspiring when ancient protocols were followed carefully or just plain incompetent when wannabe monarchs and warriors became more self-centred and impatient.
Therefore, what sacrifices are been made by today’s Mangaian authorities to improve the lifestyle of its people so we compete with our neighbours to gain all that is good in this world? What ancient or contemporary protocols are being followed carefully to inspire us all? 4
When Pangemiro Ariki followed by Numangatini Ariki changed Mangaian society forever by accepting Christianity, their primary goal was to bring an end to the destruction created by warfare. Eventually all of Mangaia converted to the God of Israel and have since enjoyed colonised peace that came with the new religion. This new peace, or Te mangaia o te Atu, in turn gave the Aronga Mana the right to rein unimpeded by constant challenges to its power base because they are not required to prove themselves in some form of rites de passage or prospect as for a gang patch. Perhaps this is a good thing. Personally, I do not think so. Ancient Voices’ author did not become a professor by being peaceful and accommodating.
Nevertheless, I commend the Aronga Mana and Professor Reilly for the effort and time put into creating and publishing Ancient Voices: A History of the Ancient Gods and Chiefs, which honours many of my descendants and the struggles they experienced to live free, honourable, and unbound lives with their gods and each other on the oldest island in the Pacific.
Ancient Voices would no doubt have made my dad extremely proud. I myself am deeply indebted to the Aronga Mana and the professor for the honour bestowed upon the ancestors of Tavake who herself suffered at the ure kau’anga kore (worthless penis) of her father Rongo to bless her own tiny homeland of Auau Enua with the ancient and proud legacy of possessing its own Three Kings. Tangi ke rava.
References
Gill, Reverend William-Wyatt. 1876
Life in the Southern Isles; or, Scenes and Incidents in the South Pacific and Papua New Guinea. Religious Tract Society, London, England
Reilly, Professor Michael P.J. 2009
Ancestral Voices from Mangaia: A History of the Ancient Gods and Chiefs. The Polynesian Society (Inc), Auckland, New Zealand
Syme, Ronald. 1978
The Lagoon is Lonely Now. Millward Press, Wellington, New Zealand
Stories of Mangaia
books
| Title | Mangaia and the Mission |
| Author | Peter Henry Buck |
| Editors | Rod Dixon, Teaea Parima |
| Publisher | editorips@usp.ac.fj, 1993 |
Prehistory and Human ecology in eastern Polynesia Patrick V. Kirch
David W. Steadman
Virginia L. Butler
Jon Hather and Marshall I. Weisler..Article first published online: 14 NOV 2014
Art  made from the cliffs of Mangaia | |
Also since touristim is not a significant industry, they are forced to make do with their own resources.
There are some local carving particularly of calcite a popular artifact is the Mangaian stone, Pounder of pestle, used to smash the fibrous root of the taro.
In ancient days Mangaians were famous makers of stone headed Adzes with intricately carved wooden handles featuring a distinctive Double --- K design.
Local government is run on a communal basis and is administered b...y various districts Kavana's a Loan word from the English Governer.
Once a year each villages hold a meeting attended by everyone to hear discussion and to decide on plans for the coming year for planting and other
Important issues.
Mangaia has its own queen with a Palace in Oneroa, but she prefers to live with her family in more modest surroundings in Tamarua.
There are some local carving particularly of calcite a popular artifact is the Mangaian stone, Pounder of pestle, used to smash the fibrous root of the taro.
In ancient days Mangaians were famous makers of stone headed Adzes with intricately carved wooden handles featuring a distinctive Double --- K design.
Local government is run on a communal basis and is administered b...y various districts Kavana's a Loan word from the English Governer.
Once a year each villages hold a meeting attended by everyone to hear discussion and to decide on plans for the coming year for planting and other
Important issues.
Mangaia has its own queen with a Palace in Oneroa, but she prefers to live with her family in more modest surroundings in Tamarua.
Allan Tuara
Admiration for the traditional carvings of his island (specifically traditional ceremonial adzes) and a passionate desire to keep this art alive inspires the work of Mangaian carver, Allan Tuara. Mangaia is the southern most island of the Cook Islands.
Allan’s works are replicas of traditonal Mangaian Ceremonial adzes using images he has found from his research into Mangaian history. He takes care to ensure that his adzes are as close to the original designs as possible. Each Mangaian motif is intricately carved by hand. The ornate sennit lashings, made of coconut husk fibre, he braids himself (a long and tedious process!). The adze heads he fashions from either basalt or calcite rock found naturally on Mangaia.Many long hours have gone into producing these pieces of art, but for Allan, immensely rewarding when completed. His pieces are on display in Rarotonga at Moana Gems Pearl & Art Gallery.
a,b,e,i,k,l,m,n,o,p,r,s,t,u,v,w, are the letters in the cook island alphabet
c,d,f,g,h,j,q,x,y arent in the cook island alphabet
f,h,l,s,w,y are in the cook island dialectual alphabet
b,s,z are in the cook island biblical alphabet
