“Fa’a-nui (Auriga) dwelt with his wife Tahi-ari’i (Unique Sovereign / Capella in Auriga), and begat his prince Ta’urua (Great Festivity / Venus), who runs in the evening, and who heralds the night and the day, the stars, the moon, and the sun, as a compass to guide Hiro’s ship at sea [Hiro was a Polynesian god who, like the Greek Hermes, specialized in trickery]. And there followed Ta’ero (Bacchus or Mercury), by the sun.
“Ta’urua (Great Venus) prepared his canoe, Mata-taui-noa (Continually-changing-face), and sailed along the west, to King South, and dwelt with his wife Rua-o-mere (cavern-of-parental-yearnings / Capricorn), the compass that stands on the southern side of the sky.”
At night, when stars (and planets) were the most important indicator for a Polynesian sailor and were followed closely, each in turn would be replaced by another “guide star” when one rose too high or went below the horizon. Stars were like the songlines of the Aborigines in Australia. Not all stars, of course, were to be counted on. Some were known to be tricksters or troublemakers or just plain trivial; and contemporary navigators from the island of Anuta, between the Solomon and Fijian archipelagoes, still refer to stars in the major constellations as “carriers,” while unnamed stars are called “common” or “foolish.” Knowledge of the night sky was detailed, and laced together with lyric, narrative, and dramatic anecdotes of both natural and supernatural presences, with traits that many of us would recognize from the melodrama of Mediterranean and Scandinavian mythology. A Samoan celestial catalog, for example, not only described red-faced Mata-memea (Mars) but also slow-goer Telengese (Sirius) and the balance-pole Amonga (Orion’s Belt)—all of which showed the way for voyagers traveling from Samoa to Tonga. Cloudy weather or fog could of course interfere, but in most of the Central and South Pacific the visibility is exceptionally clear and cloud coverage limited to a few months. The early European explorers all confirmed this, and recent reports from the region suggest that clear skies can be expected at least two thirds of the year, with certain stars visible almost every night.
So even without the ability to determine east or west longitude (a disability shared with Europeans until the eighteenth century), Polynesians had techniques as trustworthy as those of the Europeans for determining direction. Also, exact navigation was not always necessary when islands were indicated by the character of currents and clouds, the movement of fish and birds, the sight and smell of drifting plants and leaves, and the keen eyes of seafarers (especially useful just before sunrise and just after sunset, when land is most easily spotted). And indeed, the same approximation was standard for European sailors during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when both nautical charts and navigation involved estimates, and when no sailor relying on them could ever be sure precisely where he was, much less where the island he was looking for might be.
All navigators are storytellers as well as wayfinders, reading and interpreting both natural and man-made signs; and knowledge of these signs, passed down from generation to generation, has always been a crucial part of a navigational heritage. The principle is the same everywhere, though the medium may differ. Seafarers have relied on such songs and stories to tell them where—and sometimes why—to go and how to get there, taking them along on their voyages in memory or aided by drawings or knotted strings or manuscripts, or by ship’s logs and sailor’s journals. The best guide for navigation worldwide has often been the latest story told by those who have traveled that way before—after all, if they hadn’t found a way, they wouldn’t be telling the story.
Polynesians made their way by the quality of their attention to their stories as well as to the sea; and that attention had to be exquisitely focused. Order and relationship are everything at sea, and songs and stories guided them through as surely as the stars.
A traditional chant from Raiatea, near Tahiti, shows the detailed geographical knowledge of people in the South Pacific; it speaks of islands that are part of the Society Islands, the Tuamotu Archipelago, and the Marquesas Islands, as well as Hawaii. Such a song would have provided navigational direction as surely as a European nautical chart.
Let more land grow from Havai[k]i! [Often identified with Raiatea, an island in French Polynesia and the legendary birthplace of the Polynesian people.] Spica is the star, and Aeuere is the king of Havai[k]i, the birthplace of lands.
The morning Apparition rides upon the flying vapour, that rises from the chilly moisture.
Bear thou on! Bear on and strike where? Strike upon the Sea-of-rank-odour in the borders of the west!
The sea casts up Vavau (Borabora), the first-born, with the fleet that consumes both ways, and Tupai, islets of the King.
Strike on! The sea casts up Maupiti, again it casts up Maupihaa, Scilly Island [Manuae] and Bellinghausen (Motuiti).
Bear thou on! Bear on and strike where? Strike east! The sea casts up Huahine of the fleet that adheres to the Master, in the sea of Marama.
Bear thou on and strike north! The sea casts up little Maiao of the birds in the sea of Marama.
Bear thou on! Bear on and strike where? The star Spica flies south, strike north-east!
The sea casts up Long-fleet in the rising waves of the Shaven-sea—the Shoal-of-Atolls (Paumotu) [Tuamotu Archipelago].
Bear thou on! Bear on and strike where? The vapour flies to the outer border of the Shaven-sea, strike there?
The sea casts up Honden Island, strike far north! The sea casts up the distant Fleet-of-clans (Marquesas) of the waves that rise up into towering billows! [. . .]
The sea of the Sooty Tern casts up the Island Cleared-by-the-heat-of-Heaven. There is cast up again the People’s Headland. [. . .]
Bear thou on! [. . .] Redness will grow, it will grow on the figurehead of the mountain at thine approach, as the sea ends over there!
Angry flames shoot forth, redness grows, it grows upon the figurehead, as the sea ends over there.
That is Aihi [the Hawaiian Islands], land of the great fishhook, land where the raging fire ever kindles, land drawn up through the undulation of the towering waves from the Foundation! Beyond is Oahu.
The first people to settle on what we now call Tahiti, about fifteen hundred years ago, were originally from the mainland of East Asia and Southeast Asia—though seafaring in the Pacific had flourished for thousands of years already, accelerated by cycles of climate change that caused the sea levels to rise and fall and dislocated coastal peoples. Some of them took to the ocean in search of new lands—islands—to call home, and over time they settled the atolls and islands and archipelagoes of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. In the words of one ethnographer writing early in the twentieth century, these Pacific seafarers were “the champion explorer[s] of unknown seas of Neolithic times. For [. . .] long centuries the Asiatic tethered his ships to his continent ere he gained courage to take advantage of the six months’ steady wind across the Indian Ocean; the Carthaginian crept cautiously down the West African coasts, tying his vessel to a tree each night lest he should go to sleep and lose her; your European got nervous when the coastline became dim, and Columbus felt his way across the Western Ocean while his half-crazed crew whined to their gods to keep them from falling over the edge of the world.”
The sheer size of the Pacific made seafaring a special challenge. Winds and currents, which complicate all ocean travel, become major obstacles over such long distances if one doesn’t have the knowledge or the technology to sail against these natural forces. European sailors, until late in the day, had neither, and so they found it hard to credit the Polynesians with the nautical and navigational expertise that they themselves lacked—but which the Polynesians would