Polynesian religion

Overview

Polynesian religion is not one creed but a family of related traditions practiced across the Polynesian Triangle, the huge stretch of the Pacific from Hawaiʻi in the north to Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the southwest and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the southeast. Polynesian societies shared an animist outlook, holding that all things carried mana, a sacred power protected by tapu, prohibitions whose violation was believed to bring supernatural harm, and honored great gods such as Tangaroa (Ta'aroa in Tahiti), Tāne, Tū and Rongo, whose names and importance varied by island, alongside local and ancestral spirits at marae, open ceremonial courtyards found across the region in many local forms. European contact from the eighteenth century brought Christianity, which most Polynesians practice today, often blended with older custom.^{[1–4, 6]}

History

Settlement and a shared religious outlook c. 1000 BCE–1200 CE

Polynesia's islands were settled in stages beginning around 3,000 years ago, when the Lapita culture reached the western islands of Tonga and Samoa, and the wider Polynesian Triangle, including Hawaiʻi, Aotearoa and Rapa Nui, among the last parts of the globe reached by human settlement, over the centuries that followed; despite thousands of miles of ocean and, in places, a thousand years or more of separation, the societies that resulted kept a markedly similar religious outlook centered on mana, tapu, and a pantheon that commonly included Tangaroa, Tāne, Tū and Rongo.^[1–3]

Marae, worship and Taputapuātea c. 1300–1800 CE

Across Polynesia, communities built marae, ceremonial and in places funerary spaces that by tradition stood where the world of the living met the world of the ancestors and the gods; on the island of Ra'iātea in what is now French Polynesia, the marae complex of Taputapuātea became the center of a political and religious alliance spanning much of eastern Polynesia from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, dedicated to 'Oro, a god of war and son of the creator Ta'aroa, and maintained by chiefs, warriors and priests who traveled there by outrigger canoe.^[4–5]

European contact and Christianization 18th–20th century CE

European navigators and missionaries arrived across Polynesia from the late eighteenth century onward; Christianity, which first took hold in Tahiti at the start of the nineteenth century, had become central to most islanders' lives on the major island groups by around the mid-nineteenth century, though some remote islands held out far longer, and the new faith was often blended with older custom rather than simply replacing it.^[6]

Key moments

1. c. 1250 CEThe moai of Rapa Nui · Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
2. 1819 CEKaʻahumanu ends the kapu · Kailua-Kona, Hawaiʻi

Places

Taputapuātea

FRA · UNESCO World Heritage, 2017

A marae complex on Ra'iātea, dedicated to the war god 'Oro, which from the 14th to the 18th century was the ceremonial and political center of an alliance spanning much of Polynesia.^[5]

Art & objects

Public-domain objects from museum collections. Select one to see it at the museum.

Ceremonial AdzePolynesia, Mangaia, Cook Islands, 19th century, 1800sPendant (Hei-tiki)Polynesia, New Zealand, Maori people, 19th century, 1800sTreasure Box (Wakahuia)Polynesia, New Zealand, Maori people, 19th century, 1800sGorget (Rei Miro)Pacific Islands, Polynesia, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), 1800sDoor Lintel (Pare)Pacific Islands, Polynesia, New Zealand, Māori people, 1800sPapahou (treasure box)Maori people, 18th centuryLizard Man Figure (Moko)Rapa Nui people, late 19th centuryTekoteko (gable figure)Maori people, Te Arawa, 1820sTiki (male figure)Mangarevan peoples, Early 19th centuryMoai papa (female figure)Rapa Nui people, 19th centuryMale Figure (Moai Kavakava)Rapa Nui people, mid to late 19th centuryAmo (house post figure)Maori people, Te Arawa, ca. 1800

How we know

Many islands, one description

What is called "Polynesian religion" is a scholarly generalization drawn from societies spread across a vast ocean area and documented mainly through outsiders' accounts from the eighteenth century onward, together with surviving genealogies, chants and archaeology; popular Western images of pre-contact Polynesia as an idyllic, carefree paradise do not match that record, which instead shows societies that were complex and highly stratified, adapted to environments that could be demanding and sometimes hostile.^[7]

Common misconceptions

Glossary

mana

A sacred, impersonal power believed to be present in people, chiefs, objects and places to varying degrees; the basis of much Polynesian social and religious status.^[2]