The Pii Mato
p. 35 · Read in the full issue
A Vanished Race of Cliff- Dwellers in Tahiti.
By “Opunohu.”
THIRTY or more years ago, one could not be long in the Islands without hearing stories of the Pii Mato.
Pii Mato (which means literally, Calling from the Cliff Tops) was the name applied to a people who lived in the hidden valleys and on the high plateaux of the interior mountains of Tahiti and Moorea. They were prob ably the aboriginal inhabitants of the islands who were driven inland by the earliest wave of warrior invasion from the West, and maintained themselves in the remote pockets of the mountains and inaccessible heights during the centuries which followed.
Numerous stone-buttressed terraces and house platforms at high altitudes far inland, on both islands, bear witness that these lofty districts were heavily populated in ancient times. , General repute credits the Pii Mato with extraordinary abilities for climbing the perpendicular cliffs which forbid ac cess to many parts to the ordinary mountaineer. They were said to have accomplished these feats by the aid of short, pointed ironwood sticks, held in each hand, which they inserted in the cracks and crevices of the cliffs, as they climbed, and so drew themselves up from height to height.
The writer came to the Islands just too late to see any of these interesting people, but he has shaken the hand that shook the hand of the last of the Pii Mato. A friend of many years who passed his youth on Moorea, knew well the probable last surviving Pii Mato of that island.
Often this friend and a number of companions went inland on expeditions for Fe’i (mountain plantain). Most of the valleys terminate at a straight up and down precipice; to gain the heights the party was compelled to follow a roundabout way up the flanking hills.
Whenever the old Pii Mato went with them he, with the aid of his ironwood sticks, would be up the cliff, have gath ered his bunches of Fe’i, and have descended again to the valley floor be fore the others of the party had arrived at their destination, i The native stories of former times allege that the Pii Mato possessed supernatural powers, especially the power of levitation. They were believed to be able to spread their arms and float from mountain top to mountain top by the power of their enchantments, or to raise their bodies from the valley floors to the most dizzy heights; but that is legend.
What is probably true is that neces sity and centuries of training developed a technique of climbing which caused the uninitiated to marvel. Hence these strange stories, which became imbedded in native belief, about this mysterious and now vanished people.