... Captain Cook recorded (the first record of Polynesian mythology ever made) this Tahitian account of the Creation: 'Ta'aroa tahi tumu, Ta'aroa origl. stock - most commonly Ta'aroa or Te Tumu - existed before everything except of a rock (Te Papa) which he compressed and begat a daughter (Ahuone) that is Vegetable Mole.*

* Ahuone means 'earth heaped up' - a widespread name for the Polynesian first woman. It sounds as if Cook also heard the term applied to the banks of humus and rotting material on which taro is grown. In the English of his day this was known as 'vegetable mould'.

1. To turn (vt.), to overthrow, to knock down: huri moai, the overthrowing of the statues from their ahus during the period of decadence on the island. 2. To pour a liquid from a container: ka huri mai te vai, pour me some water. 3. To end a lament, a mourning: he huri i te tagi, ina ekó tagi hakaou, with this the mourning (for the deceased) is over, there shall be no more crying. 4. New shoot of banana: huri maîka. Vanaga.

1. Stem. P Mgv.: huri, a banana shoot. Mq.: hui, shoot, scion. 2. To turn over, to be turned over onto another side, to bend, to lean, to warp; huri ke, to change, to decant; tae huri ke, invariable; huri ke tahaga no mai, to change as the wind; tae huri, immovable; e ko huri ke, infallible; huhuri, rolling; hakahuri, to turn over; hakahuri ke, to divine. P Pau.: huri, to turn. Mgv.: huri, uri, to turn on one side, to roll, to turn upside down, to reverse. Mq.: hui, to turn, to reverse. 3. To throw, to shoot. 4. To water, to wet. 5. To hollow out. Hurihuri: 1. Wrath, anger; kokoma hurihuri, animosity, spite, wrath, fury, hate, enmity, irritable, quick tempered, to feel offended, to resent, to pester; kokoma hurihuri ke, to be in a rage. 2. (huri 4) hurihuri titi, to fill up. 3. To polish. 4. (uriuri). Hurikea, to transfigure, to transform. Churchill.

Mq. huri, resemblance. Sa.: foliga, to resemble. Churchill.

... Another year passed, and a man by the name of Ure Honu went to work in his banana plantation. He went and came to the last part, to the 'head' (i.e., the upper part of the banana plantation), to the end of the banana plantation. The sun was standing just right for Ure Honu to clean out the weeds from the banana plantation.

On the first day he hoed the weeds. That went on all day, and then evening came. Suddenly a rat came from the middle of the banana plantation. Ure Honu saw it and ran after it. But it disappeared and he could not catch it. On the second day of hoeing, the same thing happened with the rat. It ran away, and he could not catch it. On the third day, he reached the 'head' of the bananas and finished the work in the plantation. Again the rat ran away, and Ure Honu followed it. It ran and slipped into the hole of a stone. He poked after it, lifted up the stone, and saw that the skull was (in the hole) of the stone. (The rat was) a spirit of the skull (he kuhane o te puoko) ...

Ure Honu was amazed and said, 'How beautiful you are! In the head of the new bananas is a skull, painted with yellow root and with a strip of barkcloth around it.' Ure Honu stayed for a while, (then) he went away and covered the roof of his house in Vai Matā. It was a new house. He took the very large skull, which he had found at the head of the banana plantation, and hung it up in the new house. He tied it up in the framework of the roof (hahanga) and left it hanging there ...

"... The king, wearing now a short, stiff archaic mantle, walks in a grave and stately manner to the sanctuary of the wolf-god Upwaut, the 'Opener of the Way', where he anoints the sacred standard and, preceded by this, marches to the palace chapel, into which he disappears. A period of time elapses during which the pharaoh is no longer manifest.

When he reappears he is clothed as in the Narmer palette, wearing the kilt with Hathor belt and bull's tail attatched. In his right hand he holds the flail scepter and in his left, instead of the usual crook of the Good Shepherd, an object resembling a small scroll, called the Will, the House Document, or Secret of the Two Partners, which he exhibits in triumph, proclaiming to all in attendance that it was given him by his dead father Osiris, in the presence of the earth-god Geb.

'I have run', he cries, 'holding the Secret of the Two Partners, the Will that my father has given me before Geb. I have passed through the land and touched the four sides of it. I traverse it as I desire.' ... " (Campbell 2)

The higher-ranked of the two largest political units on Rapa Nui was the Ko Tu'u Aro Ko Te Mata Nui. This literally translates as The Mast/Pillar/Post [standing] Before the Greater Tribes. Toko te rangi, or Sky Propper, is named by Métraux in his corrected Miru genealogy as the thirteenth king of Easter Island and as one of the lineages or subgroups of the Miru. Although we have no record of the Sky Propper legend on Rapa Nui, other Polynesian legends of the Sky Propper are widely known, and they are formative elements in the basic cosmogenic theory of Polynesian beleif.

Sky (rangi) and Earth (papa) lay in primal embrace, and in the cramped, dark space between them procreated and gave birth to the gods such as Tane, Rongo and Tu. Just as children fought sleep in the stifling darkness of a hare paenga, the gods grew restless between their parents and longed for light and air. The herculean achievement of forcing Sky to separate from Earth was variously performed by Tane in New Zealand and the Society Islands, by Tonofiti in the Marquesas and by Ru (Tu) in Cook Islands. After the sky was raised high above the earth, props or poles were erected between them and light entered, dispelling the darkness and bringing renewed life. One detail which is iconographically of interest is whether the god responsible for separating Earth and Sky did so by raising the Sky with his upraised arms and hands, as in Tahiti and elsewhere, or with his feet as in New Zealand.

The actual props, pillars or posts which separated the sky and earth are called toko in New Zealand, to'o in the Marquesas Islands and pou in Tahiti. In Rapanui tuu and pou are known, with pou meaning column, pillar or post of either stone or wood. Sometimes the word is applied to a natural rock formation with postlike qualities which serves as an orientation point. The star Sirius is called Te Pou in Rapanui and functions in the same way. 

One monolithic basalt statue is called Pou Hakanononga, a somewhat obscure and probably late name thought to mean that the statue served to mark an offshore tuna fishing site. The Rapanui word tokotoko means pole or staff. Sacred ceremonial staves, such as the ua on Rapa Nui, were called toko in Polynesia. 

Based upon the fact that toko in New Zealand also means 'rays of light', it has been suggested that the original props which separated and held apart Sky and Earth were conceived of as shafts of dawn sunlight. 

In most Polynesian languages the human and animate classifier is toko-, suggesting a congruence of semantic and symbolic meaning between anthropomorphic form and pole or post. Tane as First Man and the embodiment of sunlight thus becomes, in the form of a carved human male figure, the probable inspiration for the moai as sacred prop between Sky and Earth.

The moai as Sky Propper would have elevated Sky and held it separate from Earth, balancing it only upon his sacred head. This action allowed the light to enter the world and made the land fertile. Increasing the height of the statues, as the Rapa Nui clearly did over time, would symbolically increase the space between Sky and Earth, ensuring increased fertility and the greater production of food. The proliferating image, consciously or unconsciously, must have visually (and reassuringly) filled the dangerously empty horizon between sea and land, just as the trees they were so inexorably felling once had. (Van Tilburg)

Tokotoko, stick, cane, crutches, axe helve, roller, pole, staff. P Pau.: tokotoko, walking stick. Mgv.: toko, a pole, stilts, staff. Mq.: tokotoko, toótoó, stick, cane, staff. Ta.: too, id. Churchill.