Tales of Tahiti — Part 1. The creation chants of old Tahiti from Ancient Tahiti (1928) by Teuira Henry, who gathered them from the records of her grandfather, J. M. Orsmond — the chants of how Ta'aroa, the Unique One, sat alone for millions of ages in his shell Rumia in the thick darkness, broke out into the empty space, and conjured forth the gods, the earth, the sea, and all living things. About twenty-one minutes of listening.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. Ta'aroa is his own parent, having neither father nor mother. He gives his shell a fillip, stands upon it in the darkness, and calls out above, below, before, behind — and only his own echo answers. He makes the great foundation rock a husband and the stratum rock a wife, and each refuses, in its own voice, to crawl to the other. The gods are born to him in darkness; his shaken-off feathers become the trees of the land; and the great octopus holds the sky down against the earth with its four arms, to the south, to the north, to the east, and to the west.
ANOTHER VERSION OF THE CREATION. The same beginning told again, as the high priests of Porapora also recited it: the shell overturned to become the dome of the sky, and Ta'aroa's own body becoming the world — his spine the mountain ranges, his ribs the slopes, his feathers the trees and creepers, his heated blood the redness of the sky and the rainbows. And the teaching of the shells: as Ta'aroa had shells, so has everything a shell — the sky, the earth, man, and woman.
THE CHAOTIC PERIOD. The ordering of the world. Which rocks have affinity and unite, and which repel; the face of Havai'i made uneven; sand and sea and land set in their courses; Tu, the great artisan, spreading the sand at Ta'aroa's word; the generations of roots holding the land firm; the shell of the sky raised upon its pillars — Hotu-i-te-rai in front, Ana-feo behind; the growth of mountains, rain, forests, and life; and at last Ta'aroa's roll-call of the finished world, answered by mountain, spring, river, ocean rock, and every living creature: "Ta'aroa is master of us all."
These chants are the creation tradition of Tahiti, and they are carried here as the tradition tells them — factually and reverently, as folk mythology. The whole chant cycle is read complete; Henry's comparative essay that follows it in her book is her scholarly apparatus and is not read. The later material of the book will be gated piece by piece as this shelf proceeds; this episode claims nothing for the volume beyond the chants it contains.
Source: Teuira Henry, Ancient Tahiti (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 48, Honolulu, 1928), public domain; lawful text via HathiTrust. A fresh in-house rendering of Henry's English translation. Narration by KacheliTV.
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