A King Is Made!

How Royalty Was Established In Rarotonga

By Julian Hillas

THE trouble started over a hundred years ago; and, of course, there was a woman at the bottom of it. Or more correctly, three women; for, according to the benighted heathenish sort of way things were then looked at, they were all queens, with equal rights both in and out of the communal royal bed.

Whether they got on well together, and which did this or that task about the Palace, does not come into this story.

The point is that in the year 1823 they were the genuine hall-marked tapa clothed, flower-crowned wives of Tino mana, Ariki of Arorangi. Remember, in those days nobody thought much of monogamy, and a king with less than three wives simply wouldn’t have cut any ice at all.

But nothing untoward rocked this mat rimonial boat until the arrival of the first missionaries, who whispered in the Royal ear that having three wives was hardly the right thing to do. Christian decency pointed to a single course. Let the king choose one and dismiss the others.

Poor, plump Tinomana, harassed by the enormity of such a decision, found him self pulled in several directions. Three, to be exact. But with the aid, prompting and protection of his new advisers he eventually selected the youngest and most attractive of the trio; and, with her, came into the fold as respectably married as any suburban church-sidesman.

The knotty question of succession was also settled at the same time. Offspring of the legitimate Queen had priority; but, on the death of Tinomana’s immediate successor, the children or next-of-kin of the two rejected “wives” were to reign respectively. This arrangement sounded plain and straightforward enough then, especially as no one gave a thought to what sort of a tangle three separate families, all breeding prolifically, might make of such a plan in the course of a hundred odd years.

In the course of time, the original Tino mana died, and first one and then another of the three families reigned in his stead, until each had had its turn on the throne of Arorangi. For the sake of clarity, I give the names by which they are com monly known to-day. They are the Heathers, the Pirangis and the Napas; and, by marriage, the Heathers had iden tified themselves with the powerful clan of Makea, from which the Paramount Chiefs of Rarotonga are drawn.

The fun began last year, following the death of Tuoro Tinomana; and it has since galloped through all the stages of a Gil bert and Sullivan production.

Each family had had its turn; and each had stood pat for a second innings— eleven claimants, six from the Heathers, three from the Pirangis, and two from the Napas.

The late Tuoro—a Heather—had con siderably complicated matters before his death by nominating his son Rangi, ob taining for this nomination the support of the Mataiapos (or district headmen). The three families, however, objected, on the dual grounds of Rangi’s youth and the fact that that particular branch had just occupied the throne.

Rangi was bowled, middle stump.

Tinirau Makea, by virtue of his posi tion as Paramount Chief of Rarotonga, as well as his being a member of the Heather

group, then proposed David Isiah, also of the same family. The district headmen countered with the objection that David Isiah had no wife to shoulder the queenly duties.

Faced by this fresh difficulty, the Para mount Chief made a further suggestion.

Let Ngatae Vaine, sister of the deceased Tinomana, and a distant relation of David Isiah’s, reign jointly with the latter. But Ngatae Vaine, a lady of some character, refused flatly to share the Palace with a king who was not her husband.

Not to be defeated the Paramount Chief rose brilliantly to the occasion. What, he asked, was a simpler or more obvious solution than that the two get married?

The one was a widow and the other a widower.

For a moment the Heather dynasty seemed assured.

And then, baldly and brutally, but with no uncertain voice, David Isiah announced that nothing, not even a Crown, would in duce him to marry again, either Ngatae Vaine or anybody else.

David Isiah went out l.b.w.

Impasse!

Meanwhile, both the Pirangi and Napa candidates had said very little, the Napas because they were not sure about their

own claims, and the Pirangis because they were so certain about theirs that it would have been undignified to thrust themselves forward.

At this juncture, Tinirau Makea him self went in to bat —more, I believe, with the object of bringing the rest of the team to their senses than with any serious in tention of knocking up a high personal score. His action had the desired effect, and the Resident Commissioner convened a Native Land Court at which the claim ants appeared with all the paraphernalia of ancestral records, land titles, and faded entries in Bibles handed down from one generation to another.

Through these, the Commissioner con scientiously waded, with the result that the Pirangi claim emerged triumphant.

Old Tuki Pirangi left the court, meta phorically carrying not only his bat but the entire cricket bag, in which it is hoped that some thoughtful official had packed the Royal crown.

For ever and a day, until a new form of democracy abolishes Island Royalty, the Pirangis will continue to sit, unchal lenged, on the throne of Arorangi.

The grounds are empty, the last spec tator gone home, and the pavilion closed.