cally controlled by the central government of the Solomon
Islands, its distance from the seat of government and its gen-
eral isolation have meant a degree of autonomy in retaining
traditional practices and beliefs. The effect of this isolation
on its religious practices will be discussed below.
While the majority of islands in the Solomons are peo-
pled by Melanesians, Tikopia is a Polynesian outlier. That
is, while it lies outside the true Polynesian triangle in the Pa-
cific Ocean, it shares genetic, linguistic, and cultural traits
with Polynesian islands such as Samoa, Tonga, and with the
Maori of New Zealand. The major religious beliefs and prac-
tices of traditional (i.e., precontact) Polynesia were similar.
Traditional Polynesians believed humans had an invisible
counterpart or soul that continued its existence after death
in an afterworld variously located in the sky or the sea and
often composed of a series of heavens. They believed in an
analogous life principle in animals and plants. They wor-
shiped gods (atua) who had never been human as well as im-
portant human ancestors now also regarded as atua. Some
of these gods could be regarded as departmental deities hav-
ing responsibility for the sky, the sea, the land, and warfare
as well as for elements, like the wind. The atua generally were
beneficent, but there were also spirit entities that could cause
harm.
Traditional Polynesian religion used abstract thought
and symbolism. Offerings of food to the gods were made in
the belief that the immaterial substance of the food was con-
sumed by the gods but that the actual food could later be
eaten by human participants in the rituals. Equally the mate-
rial symbols of gods and ancestors (statues, significant rocks
and trees) were seen as representations or memorials and not
actual figurations with specific powers.
Existing knowledge of traditional Polynesian religion is,
on the whole, fragmentary and often mediated through the
records of missionaries whose duty it was to extirpate these
pagan beliefs. Complete conversion of most of Polynesia to
Christianity had taken place by the middle of the 1800s.
However, Tikopia’s isolation and small size made it difficult
to find in the early days of Pacific exploration and not worth
the effort of exploiting commercially for forced labor or land.
This meant that when Raymond Firth carried out his first
period of anthropological fieldwork in 1928–1929, the tradi-
tional religion was still practiced by three out of the four
chiefs and by half the population. Therefore an excellent eth-
nographic record exists of the traditional ritual cycle, which
was referred to as the “Work of the Gods.” This summary
of traditional Tikopia religious beliefs comes from Firth’s ex-
tensive writings.
The island is traditionally controlled by four ariki
(chiefs), heads of patrilineages believed, according to origin
myths, to have begun with the birth of four male children
to the Atua Fafine (premier female god) and the Atua Lasi
(great god). The birth order of the children is reflected in the
ranking of the chiefs, and their divine antecedents meant that
the chiefs traditionally were regarded as sacred (tapu). The
body of the chief, and especially his head, is still regarded as
tapu because of his mana or inherent mystical power. In this
hierarchically ranked society, maru or ritual elders are next
below the chiefs. They are men who come from junior chief-
ly lines. They originally had roles with the ariki in the tradi-
tional religion, and they still have a political function on the
island. Commoners, or tauarofa, make up the bulk of the
population. Descent is traced patrilineally, and women take
no roles in either the politics or the religious practices of the
island, although this is changing among those who have left
the home island.
TIKOPIA CONCEPTS AND RITUAL. Tikopia religion tradi-
tionally rested upon a belief that a set of spiritual beings
(atua) controlled the fertility of nature and the health and
well-being of the people. These atua comprised the spirits of
dead chiefs and their ritual elders and a number of major
gods, most notably the eponymous gods of each clan: the
Atua i Kafika, Atua i Tafua, Atua i Taumako, and Atua i
Fangarere. The Kafika clan is the senior of the four, and most
significant in the Tikopia pantheon was the Atua i Kafika.
An elision may have occurred here: the original four brothers
were the children of true deities and were themselves deities,
but the Atua i Kafika, as he is conceptualized now, was be-
lieved to have lived as a mortal man, a chief and a culture
hero, responsible for many Tikopian traditional institutions.
Killed by an opponent in a struggle for land, he abjured retal-
iation as he lay dying, and thus morally elevated, he suc-
ceeded to the highest position among the gods.
A few female deities were usually highly dangerous to
humans: Nau Fiora was preeminent in this group and was
believed to have the power to steal the souls of children,
thereby killing them. Other female spirits, not deities but
also never human, existed in various parts of the island and
were sometimes seen benignly leading their spirit children to
the sea. However, more dangerous ones existed in the bush
and were capable of seducing and killing men. Ideas about
gender in the temporal world, where women were conceptu-
alized as powerless but having the potential to be dangerous,
were reflected in the spirit world. There were also some other
potentially dangerous entities with human origins, such as
the spirits of children, either stillborn or miscarried. A child
that died before recognizing his or her parents, that is, up
to about the age of six weeks after birth, also came into this
category, as did occasionally the spirits of young males who
had died in accidents. While these spirits could perform mis-
chievous actions by themselves, they were also the ones that
often manifested themselves through spirit mediums.The major gods of the pantheon had several personal
names or titles that were held as secret information by the
religious leaders, and it was through the ritual invocation of
the name that the god could be stimulated to listen to and
grant the requests of his worshipers. The deities were on the
whole “owned” by different clans and lineages, and although
there was some overlap in their attribution, each spirit had
a primary social affiliation.TIKOPIA RELIGION 9195