Tafahi

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Tafahi is a small (1.2 km x 2.8 km) island in the north of the Tonga archipelago, in fact closer to Savaiʻi (Sāmoa) than the main islands of Tonga. It is only 9 km northnortheast away from Niuatoputapu, and fishermen communicate in small outboard motorboats almost daily between the two.

Older names for Tafahi are Cocos Eylant (coconut island) or Boscawen island.

1 Geography
2 Myth
3 History
4 Language
5 References

[edit] Geography

Tafahi is a volcanic island and has the typical cone shape of a stratovolcano, now long extinct. The mountain is called Piu-ʻo-Tafahi (fanpalm of Tafahi) and is 560 m high. (The island, 3.42 km², is smaller than Niuatoputapu, but higher). The soil is extremily suited for growing kava and vanilla, whose exports to the rest of Tonga and beyond is the main occupation of the population.

The harbour (merely an opening in the fringing reef, only passable by small boats) is at the northwest of the island. A steep staircase leads up to the village, about 100 souls large, located on a plateau on the northside of the mountain.

There is a government primary school.

[edit] Myth

It is told in local mythology that some naughty ʻaitu from Sāmoa one night wanted to steal the mountain of Niuafoʻou to bring it to Sāmoa. It started off well for them, they got the mountain, leaving Niuafoʻou behind with a big lake in its centre, and were dragging it through the sea, already halfway near Niuatoputapu. They had to hurry because ʻaitu law prescribed that they had to complete the work before sunrise.

But the fish god Seketoʻa saw them and did not like it. He ordered his matāpule (spokesmen) to cry as roosters, in the hope that the ʻaitu would think that dawn was close and they could as well give up. But it did not work, the ʻaitu were not ready yet to give up and only pulled harder. Then Seketoʻa himself acted. He swam in from of the ghosts, showing them his anus, which was red. The ghosts were frightened. They thought they saw the red sun rising and that it was already morning. They dropped the mountain and fled to Sāmoa.

And that is the reason that Tafahi is now there where it is.

[edit] History

Tafahi was put on the European maps by Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire during their famous circumnavigation of the globe in 1616. They were it who gave it the name Cocos Eylant because of the abundancy of coconut palms. A multitude of natives in their outrigger canoes came to see their visitors. As the explorers describe in their journal, the natives were peaceful, willing to come on board, leaving barely any space for the Dutch themselves, and they traded large quantities of coconuts and ubes roots (probably ʻufi (yam)) for iron nails and strings of beads. But as the island did not offer a suitable place to anchor, the ship the Eendracht (Unity) proceeded next to Niuatoputapu.

[edit] Language

Jacob LeMaire tried to collect words from the natives. 32 words he put in his journal as the Vocabulaer: Oft Tale van d'Eylanden Salomonis, and some more of the Tale van het Cocos Eylant. In was not until 1945 before it was discovered that those labeled as from Cocoa island were in reality words from Futuna, and those mislabeled as the Solomons islands (where the Eendracht would not come at all) were the ones from Tafahi. The many errors (the printer in Holland turning a 'n' to print it as a 'u' for example) do not help in the analysis. in addition to that, when the Dutch left Tafahi for Niuatoputapu, many canoes from there had already come to them. LeMaire probably recorded a mixture of the languages of both islands. Anyway, when the words from his list are compared to modern Tongan, Sāmoan, ʻUvean and Futunan, and also Fijian then it appears that they have elements of all of them, but most of Futunan and Samoan.

Nowadays the people from Tafahi and Niuatoputapu speak Tongan. But up to the 19th century both islands must have had a quite distinct own language. In 1835 the missionary Peter Turner, on its way to Sāmoa had a stop in Niuatoputapu and found that "there are many Samoans here…". The theory that the Tuʻi Tonga empire had thoroughly "Tonganised" its colonies using Loʻau's Falefā cannot be maintained.

The real subjection of Niuatoputapu and Tafahi to Tonga does not start until the establishment of the Haʻafalefisi line and the Māʻatu chiefly line in Niuatoputapu.