e and the functions of
the Areoi Society if we were acquainted with the nature and meaning
which the natives ascribed to the god Oro, the reputed founder of the
Society; but on this subject our authorities shed little light. He is
described as the war-god[65] and as "the great national idol of Raiatea,
Tahiti, Eimeo, and some of the other islands," and he was said to be a
son of the creator Taaroa, who at first dwelt alone up aloft, but who
afterwards, with the help of his daughter Hina, created the heavens, the
earth, and the sea.[66] By European writers Oro has been variously
interpreted as a god of the dead or of the sun; and accordingly the
Society of the Areois has been variously explained as devoted either to
a cult of the Lord of the Dead for the sake of securing eternal
happiness in a world beyond the grave, or to a worship of the sun-god;
but the grounds alleged for either interpretation appear to be extremely
slight.[67]

[65] Above, p. 258.

[66] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 324, 325.

[67] Gerland takes the former view, Moerenhout the latter. See
Waitz-Gerland, _Anthropologie_, vi. 368 _sq._; J. A. Moerenhout,
_op. cit._ i. 484. The only evidence adduced by Moerenhout for
his interpretation of Oro as a sun-god is a statement that in
the Marquesas Islands the Areois suspended their performances
and went into retreat from April or May till the vernal equinox
(which in the southern hemisphere falls in September), and that
during their retreat they assumed the style of mourners and
bewailed the absence or death of their god, whom they called
Mahoui. This Mahoui is accordingly taken by Moerenhout to be the
sun and equated to Oro, the god of the Areois in the Society
Islands. But Mahoui seems to be no other than the well-known
Polynesian hero Maui, who can hardly have been the sun (see
below, p. 286 note^5); and Moerenhout's statement as to the
annual period of mourning observed by the Areois in the
Marquesas Islands is not, so far as I know, confirmed by any
other writer, and must, therefore, be regarded as open to doubt.
His statement and his interpretation of Oro and Mahoui were
accepted by Dr. Rivers, who made them the basis of his
far-reaching theory of a secret worship of the sun introduced
into the Pacific by immigrants from a far northern country, who
also built the megalithic monuments of Polynesia and Micronesi