Do You Know The “Atua”

By F. T. Goedicke-van Asten, ot Haapai, Tonga

IN 1913, while I was storekeeper for the Tongan Government, our Premier, Tuivakano, received a letter from the Governor of Fiji, stating that he had a request from the Curator of the Imperial Institute, in London, asking if he could persuade the Tonga Government to send a collection of Tonga artifacts, as Tonga was the only island of the South Pacific which was not represented in the Imperial Institute.

The Premier asked me if I would under take the task. I did; and I was very successful.

Before starting to pack for shipment, I asked the Premier if he would like to have a look at the collection' and mentioned the different articles collected. When I told him that I had got a stone Atua he laughed and said that the only stone Atua in existence was at his home at Nu kunuku.

I invited him over to my office; and, when he saw the Atua (a large stone with a hole through the centre) he became ex cited and asked who gave it to me. I told him that our Chief Justice had made the donation.

“How did he get hold of it?” he asked, I could only reply: “Ask him.”

Now, Tuivakana must have been mis taken, Rev. A. H. Woods. MA, principal of Tuoi College, Tonga, in his “History and Geography of Tonga,” writes in chap ter 3, Ancient Tongan Religion:— “Stones were worshipped: Examples of these are two stones which are at the Museum at Nafuatu, Tonga. These gods had their priests, to whom sacrifices were made in the shape of human bodies. Later a finger was cut off, instead of taking a person’s life, and the finger was offered as a sacrifice to the god.”

When I arrived in Tonga over 60 years ago, almost every Tongan I saw had lost at least one finger and indeed a few old people in this condition are still alive.

When Sir S. Escott, Governor of Fiji, visited Tonga in 1915, I was introduced to His Excellency, who told me that he had received a letter from the Imperial Insti tute. London, asking him to thank the gentleman who had sent the splendid col lection of Tongan artifacts, and that among the articles was one which he valued very much, an “Atua,” or Tongan god.

I since have received a request from an old pen-friend of mine, the Duke of Newcastle, that I try to find for him an Atua for his private collection. He had seen that ancient Atua which I was in strumental in sending to the Imperial Institute.