... A vestige of the practice of putting the king to death at the end of a year's reign appears to have survived in the festival called Macahity, which used to be celebrated in Hawaii during the last month of the year. About a hundred years ago a Russian voyager described the custom as follows: 'The taboo Macahity is not unlike to our festival of Christmas. It continues a whole month, during which the people amuse themselves with dances, plays, and sham-fights of every kind. The king must open this festival wherever he is. On this occasion his majesty dresses himself in his richest cloak and helmet, and is paddled in a canoe along the shore, followed sometimes by many of his subjects. He embarks early, and must finish his excursion at sunrise.

The strongest and most expert of the warriors is chosen to receive him on his landing. The warrior watches the canoe along the beach; and as soon as the king lands, and has thrown off his cloak, he darts his spear at him, from a distance of about thirty paces, and the king must either catch the spear in his hand, or suffer from it: there is no jesting in the business.

Having caught it, he carries it under his arm, with the sharp end downwards, into the temple or heavoo. On his entrance, the assembled multitude begin their sham-fights, and immediately the air is obscured by clouds of spears, made for the occasion with blunted ends. Hamamea (the king) has been frequently advised to abolish this ridiculous ceremony, in which he risks his life every year; but to no effect. His answer always is, that he is as able to catch a spear as any one on the island is to throw it at him. During the Macahity, all punishments are remitted throughout the country; and no person can leave the place in which he commences these holidays, let the affair be ever so important.'

September 26 (= 4 days after the equinox) could refer to the month named Vero (Welo on Hawaii):

Vero

To throw, to hurl (a lance, a spear). This word was also used with the particle kua preposed: koía kua vero i te matá, he is the one who threw the obsidian [weapon]. Verovero, to throw, to hurl repeatedly, quickly (iterative of vero). Vanaga.

1. Arrow, dart, harpoon, lance, spear, nail, to lacerate, to transpierce (veo). P Mgv.: vero, to dart, to throw a lance, the tail; verovero, ray, beam, tentacle. Mq.: veó, dart, lance, harpoon, tail, horn. Ta.: vero, dart, lance. 2. To turn over face down. 3. Ta.: verovero, to twinkle like the stars. Ha.: welowelo, the light of a firebrand thrown into the air. 4. Mq.: veo, tenth month of the lunar year. Ha.: welo, a month (about April). Churchill.

Sa.: velo, to cast a spear or dart, to spear. To.: velo, to dart. Fu.: velo, velosi, to lance. Uvea: velo, to cast; impulse, incitement. Niuē: velo, to throw a spear or dart. Ma.: wero, to stab, to pierce, to spear. Ta.: vero, to dart or throw a spear. Mg.: vero, to pierce, to lance. Mgv.: vero, to lance, to throw a spear. Mq.: veo, to lance, to throw a spear. Churchill 2.

WELO, v. Haw., to float or stream in the wind; to flutter or shake in the wind, s. the setting of the sun, or the appearance of it floating on the ocean; welo-welo, colours or cloth streaming in the wind, a tail, as of a kite, light streaming from a brand of fire thrown into the air in the dark; hoku-welo-welo, a comet, a meteor; ko-welo, to drag behind, as the trail of a garment, to stream, as a flag or pennant.

Sam., Tong., welo, to dart, cast a spear of dart. Tah., wero, to dart, throw a spear; a storm, tempest, fig. great rage; wero-wero, to twinkle, as the stars. Marqu., weo, a tail. Mangar., wero, a lance, spear.

Greek, βαλλω, εβαλον, to throw, cast, hurl, of missiles, throw out, let fall, push forward; βελος, a missile, a dart; βελεμνον, id., βολη, a throw, a stroke; βολος, anything thrown, missile, javelin, a cast of the dice. Sanskr., pal, to go, to move. To this Benfey refers the Lat. pello, Greek παλλω, O. H. Germ. fallan, A.-Sax. feallan. Liddell and Scott are silent on these connections ... (Fornander)

If the King was 'hit by the Spear' it meant his death, he would fall on his face like the leaves in autumn (fall). On Hawaii - north of the equator - this would not be in April, but in the spring nights of April the stars close to the Full Moon would have visualized the season half a year away when the Welo stars would be with the Sun, the King ruling the Sky.

The Marquesans named their 'Spear' month veo and it was their 10th lunar month. Such a lunar month was probably counted either as 29 or 30 nights:

.... It is difficult to estimate accurately the length of a month. According to the European calendar, a month has thirty or thirty-one days; the synodical month (that was used by the Polynesians) has alternatively twenty-nine and thirty days; and a traditional month, based on lunar nights, has thirty days ...

10 lunar months should measure 5 * 59 = 295 nights. If we assume vero in September 26 marks the final of 10 such lunar months, then we could go back in time 295 days to find the beginning of this cycle.

555 (Cb7-19) - 295 = 260 (Ca10-5):

December 5	6 (340)	7	8

Ca10-4	Ca10-5 (260)	Ca10-6	Ca10-7
te kiore - te inoino	kua oho te rima kua kai - ihe nuku hoi	Tupu te toromiro	kua noho te vai
no star listed	Sabik (259.7), η Scorpii (259.9), Nodus I (260.0)	π Herculis (260.7), Ras Algethi (260.8), Sarin (261.0), ο Ophiuchi (261.4)	ξ, θ Ophiuchi, ν Serpentis, ζ, ι Apodis (262.2)
June 6 (157)	7	8	9 (160)
λ Eridani (76.7)	μ Leporis (77.6), ĸ Leporis (78.0), Rigel (78.1), CAPELLA (78.4)	ο Columbae (78.8)	λ Leporis (79.6)

September 26 (269) - 295 + 365 = 339 (December 5) - not December 6 - because in the glyph text April 17 occurs twice (both at the end of side a and at the beginning of side b). To avoid this complication we can count will 366 instead of 365. September 26 (269) - 295 + 366 = 340 (December 6).

There is a quarter (91 days) from September 6 (249) to December 6 (340). In September 6 Coxa (θ Leonis) rose heliacally and in December 6 Capella (α Aurigae) was with the Moon. Counting the RA distance: 78.1 (Capella) + 365¼ - 169.4 (Coxa) = 274, which corresponds to December 20 (354 = 12 * 29½).

When in the night of December 6 the very bright star Capella (α Aurigae) - with the right ascension fraction 0.4 - was close to the Full Moon this visualized the time of the year (early June) when Capella was rising with the Sun:

Evidently the horizontal blue line is the ecliptic, while the oblique blue line represents our galaxy (the Milky Way). Remarkably, in rongorongo times these blue lines crossed each other very close to 6h - corresponding to midsummer north of the equator:

... All 'change stations' are found invariably in two regions: one in the South between Scorpius and Sagittarius, the other in the North between Gemini and Taurus; and this is valid through time and space, from Babylon to Nicaragua. Why was it ever done in the first place? Because of the Galaxy, which has its crossroads with the ecliptic between Sagittarius and Scorpius in the South, and between Gemini and Taurus in the North ...

... Men's spirits were thought to dwell in the Milky Way between incarnations. This conception has been handed down as an Orphic and Pythagorean tradition fitting into the frame of the migration of the soul. Macrobius, who has provided the broadest report on the matter, has it that souls ascend by way of Capricorn, and then, in order to be reborn, descend again through the 'Gate of Cancer'.

Macrobius talks of signs; the constellations rising at the solstices in his time (and still in ours) were Gemini and Sagittarius: the 'Gate of Cancer' means Gemini. In fact, he states explicitly (I,12.5) that this 'Gate' is 'where the Zodiac and the Milky Way intersect'. Far away, the Mangaians of old (Austral Islands, Polynesia), who kept the precessional clock running instead of switching over to 'signs', claim that only at the evening of the solstitial days can spirits enter heaven, the inhabitants of the northern parts of the island at one solstice, the dwellers in the south at the other ...

Considering the fact that the crossroads of ecliptic and Galaxy are crisis-resistant, that is, not concerned with the Precession, the reader may want to know why the Mangaians thought they could go to heaven only on the two solstitial days. Because, in order to 'change trains' comfortably, the constellations that serve as 'gates' to the Milky Way must 'stand' upon the 'earth', meaning that they must rise heliacally either at the equinoxes or at the solstices. The Galaxy is a very broad highway, but even so there must have been some bitter millenia when neither gate was directly available any longer, the one hanging in midair, the other having turned into a submarine entrance ...

Should we count forward from September 6 - from this vero point in time - then we will reach the end of the glyph text after 185 days. 260 + 295 + 185 = 740 = the number of glyphs on the tablet.

The festival 'Macahity' was probably Makahiki. (Modern man has eliminated the letter 't' from the Hawaiian dialect of Polynesian and decreed that 'k' should be used instead).

... the renewal of kingship at the climax of the Makahiki coincides with the rebirth of nature. For in the ideal ritual calendar, the kali'i battle follows the autumnal appearance of the Pleiades, by thirty-three days - thus precisely, in the late eighteenth century, 21 December, the winter solstice. The king returns to power with the sun ...

The Hawaiian month Welo would then not be 'around April' but in December, 8 months later. Perhaps some group of late newcomers to the achipelago had brought their old Moon-oriented calendar with them from central Polynesia. Otherwise months so far north of the equator evidently may have been defined by the cycle of the Sun:

Marama

1. Month, light. The ancient names of the month were: Tua haro, Tehetu'upú, Tarahao, Vaitu nui, Vaitu poru, He Maro, He Anakena, Hora iti, Hora nui, Tagaroa uri, Ko Ruti, Ko Koró. 2. Name of an ancient tribe. Maramara, ember. Vanaga.

Light, day, brightness, to glimmer; month; intelligent, sensible; no tera marama, monthly; marama roa, a long term; horau marama no iti, daybreak; hakamarama, school, to glimmer; hare hakamarama, school, classroom. P Mgv.: màràma, the light, daylight; maràma, wise, learned, instructed, moon. Mq.: maáma, light, broad day, bright, instructed, learned; meama, moon, month. Ta.: marama, moon, month. In form conditionalis this word seems derivative from lama, in which the illuminating sense appears in its signification of a torch. The sense of light, and of specifically the moon, appears in all Polynesia; in Futuna and Uvea the word signifies the world. The tropical extension to the light of intelligence is not found in Nuclear Polynesia, therefore not in the Proto-Samoan, but is a later Tongafiti development. Maramarama, bright; manava maramarama, intelligent. P Pau.: maramarama, intelligent. Ta.: maramarama, light, brightness. Churchill.

The month sense is found in Tahiti, Marquesas, Rarotonga and Maori associated with the moon signification, and in Hawaii is specifically dissociated therefrom to characterize a solar month. Churchill 2.

On Easter Island, however, there should not have been any reason to use a Sun-oriented calendar instead of the common Polynesian Moon structure. Therefore we can guess vero in September 26 refers to a day late in March (not far from April). 269 (September 26) - 182 = 87 (March 28).

Moon has 2 'faces' (Waxing and Waning) and symmetry demands there should be 2 'spears', one for each such 'face'. The model could then be extended to the greater 'month' which was a year:

... In the island of Pukapuka Te Mango, the Shark, was applied to the long dark rift which divides the Milky Way from Scorpius to Cygnus. They declared that the 'shark of winter' had its head to the south and the 'shark of summer' had its head to the north, referring to the seasonal change in the position of the constellation.

This, they said, was the monster which Maui speared and hurled high into the sky and they pointed out a small triangular patch of dark nebulosity near Scorpius as te tao, the spear with which Maui had performed his prodigious feat. In the Society Islands there were two distinct names for the rift, Vero-nu'u, Pierce-the-earth, and Vero-ra'i, Pierce-the-sky, the names of the two great wooden spears of Tane.

Vero-nuku	Pierce-the-earth
Vero-ra'i	Pierce-the-sky

The stretch of the Milky Way between the Scorpion and Sagittarius - the 'change station' in the south (at 18h and in Ophiuchus) - was maybe connected with the Shark of the dark rift (Te Mago).

And the 'change station' in the north between Taurus and Gemini ought more precisely to have been located in Auriga, with Praja-pāti (Lord of Created Beings, δ), Menkalinan (β), and Mahashim (θ) drawing the line of the June solstice.