The White Mountain
A Legend

By John A. Broussard

The People of the Ocean came from the setting sun and settled on a large island called Tamohana, where the reefs broke the fury of the seas, and quiet lagoons teeming with fish surrounded its shores. A white-capped mountain stood in the center of the island, capturing the passing clouds and forcing them to shed their burden of rain down upon the fertile land. Grateful to this guardian of their crops, the people soon worshipped it as their god, whom they called Pali.

There on Tamohana the people multiplied and prospered. There was no need to tend the breadfruit and the coconut, nor any difficulty in harvesting their endless bounty. No tree bore its fruit higher than a tall man's reach. The taro grew wild, and the tubers swelled and broke the earth inviting the people to pluck them from the ground. The fish swam willingly into the waiting nets. Enormous, flightless birds roamed the land, easily trapped and providing mounds of flesh to be roasted in the campfires.

Best of all, there was peace in the land. No one raised spear or club against his neighbor. No war canoes sailed along the island's shore. At that time the chief of the people was a woman, and the rule of the people passed from mother to daughter.

Then, one day, after countless circlings of the sun and many generations had come and gone, when a woman-chief called Tamai ruled, the island began to tremble. The people fled here and there in terror. Enormous cracksd in the ground. The great white mountain spewed smoke and ash. The sky darkened, and the clouds hovering high over Tamohana flung forked lightning down into the pandanus groves.

After three days of huddling in their huts, which had been torn and beaten by the storms, after cringing at every roar from the white mountain, and after fighting off the fear that followed every new upheaval in the ground around them, the people saw the skies clear. The sounds in the earth abated, the winds died down. Then the people gathered, terror still gripping at their hearts.

One among them, a cousin of Tamai, an old man respected by all because he knew the legends of the people word for word, stood and spoke to them. His voice carried above the wind, which still came rushing down the mountainside in fearful gusts. "Pali is speaking to us. He has given us much since our ancestors came to Tamohana, and yet we have given him nothing in return. He is now showing us his displeasure at our neglect. We must give him something, something we value above all else, something that will show him we are grateful. If we do that, he will curb his anger and once more shower us with his gifts." The people murmured and then agreed, shouting for him to tell them what they should give to Pali.

Just before the time of troubles there had been great rejoicing on Tamohana, because Tamai had given birth to a girl child, one lovely to behold. Even at birth, she had flowing black silky hair. Her large dark eyes already seemed to catch every movement around her, and a smile hovered on her face, seeming to welcome any who looked at her. The people had come from all over the island to see the proud mother and the beautiful baby lying under the pili-grass mats hung outside their stone shelter, shading the newborn from the sun. All agreed they had never looked upon so adorable a creature. All agreed they were fortunate to have been born in a time when they could see such a sight. All agreed the Ocean People were blessed to have the promise of her rule one day.

The memories of those happy days came back suddenly to first two or three in the crowd, then dozens, then hundreds. "Tamai's child" they whispered, then they spoke the words aloud, and finally they shouted the baby's name.

Tamai, herself, had been sitting cross-legged in front of her shelter, her child peacefully asleep at her breast. She heard the first murmurs, and she knew there was nothing more valuable in the whole of Tamohana than the sweet, dark-haired infant breathing softly against her body. She also knew Pali would settle for nothing less. The clouds were closing, sheet lightning flashed across the horizon, the ground trembled in impatience. With a look of agonizing pain etched across her face and then a last hug, she yielded the child to three young and sturdy men, powerful runners, who began immediately on their long journey to the mountainside and up its eastern flank.

Tamai could not take her eyes off the tip of the white mountain, the end of the journey for her child. Few of the people could look in that direction. None could look at her. Most straggled back to their torn shelters, searched in the rubble for a few morsels to feed to their crying children, and waited. After a while, the sun peered through the clouds, the trembling abated, the sheets of fire in the distance faded and went out, though the mountain still coughed and belched intermittently.

By sundown, even the wind had tired. Tamai had not. Still she watched as a full moon peered over the shoulder of the white mountain. Soon the men would return. Soon, the last link with her child would be announced.

Most of the people were asleep. Even the moon was going to rest when the tired runners returned. None of them could look at Tamai, but one crept close to her and in a half whisper said, "It is done." Tamai rose and disappeared into her stone shelter.

In the morning, when the people awoke, the happy days before the rumblings seemed to have returned. A gentle breeze blew over Tamohana. The mountain was still. Small puffs of white clouds clung to its sides, gently moving up the slopes. There were whispers of thanks among the people, but no one went near Tamai's stone shelter.

The first to notice the sea change was a young boy who had gone down to the lagoon at daybreak to find some shellfish to eat. But where, the last time he had come down to the beach, there had been a long stretch of white sand, now the sea was lapping at the base of the coconut palms. Some heard his cries and rushed to the beach in time to see the ocean water hugging the tree trunks, moving past them, slowly rising up and covering circle after circle on the bark.

By noon the villages were threatened by the inexorable tide. Canoes were pulled up to escape the flood, and stores moved to higher ground. The people murmured among themselves, and the old man who had spoken of Pali spoke once more, this time of Tumu. "We have given our most precious gift to the god of the mountain, but we have also taken much from the ocean and never once given back in return. Tumu is telling us he too has been neglected." Voices rose in the crowd, asking what should be done. The answer, "Another child," came swiftly.

No other mother was as willing as Tamai to sacrifice her child for the good of the people, but one baby was torn away. The same young man who had thrown the girl child into the smoking crater, stood on the edge of a boulder not yet flooded and hurled this new offering out into the foaming water. But the ocean continued to advance. "More, more." The cries mingled with the wailing of infants and the screams of desperate mothers, but nothing could halt the rising waters.

The crowd became a mob. In fear and despair, some of the people sought more sacrifices for the encroaching ocean. Others banded together to fend off the attackers. More and more, groups turned to the canoes and paddled out over the waters they could not defeat in search of yet another Tamohana. The sea continued to rise until finally only Tamai and a cluster of her relatives were left clinging to the mountainside. Soon her kin, after much persuasion, convinced her to board the last canoe stocked with provisions and fresh water. Even then, she insisted they stay near the island to watch the white mountain disappear beneath the ever-advancing tide.

Moments before the waves submerged the last of the land, a small wooden canoe no larger than a cradle emerged from the crater and drifted on the swells. Tamai signaled for the paddlers to approach it. Lying in a bed of ferns was a child, a boy child, not much older than the infant sacrificed to Pali. Still engorged with milk, Tamai's breasts welcomed the newcomer. The crew heaved sighs of relief, turned the prow toward the rising sun and drove the craft forward with quick slashes of their paddles.

The days went buy. The efforts of the paddlers and the friendly wind, caught in their tapa cloth sails, moved them ever eastward. Tamai found comfort in her foster child, but something was amiss. Despite its greedy nursing, the child was becoming smaller, not larger. And at night, when only one of the crew stayed awake to guide the sail, the old man who had lectured the people had found that the child could speak. Far from the one alert crewman on the long canoe, the two of them whispered to each other, the old man telling the sprit boy/man the legends of the Ocean People, the small creature passing on secrets of the white mountain in return.

Every day, as the canoe's occupants strained their backs and shaded their eyes searching for land, the child became smaller and smaller. Every night his whispered revelations to the old man became softer and softer. The day the prowman shouted news of land, the child had disappeared.

The land was Tonga, the island Tongatapu, and it was empty of people. For many years, Tamai and her kin felt they had found another Tamohana. The people again prospered, and the land provided food and clothing and shelter in abundance. Tamai had many children, most of them daughters, and the people rejoiced. Then, one day, war canoes approached over the horizon. Tamai led her peaceful people to the beach, only to be greeted by a shower of spears and by fierce warriors crashing through the surf with war clubs.

The attack stopped abruptly when spears thrown at Tamai rebounded short of their target and each found the chest of an attacking warrior. The white waves turned red with their blood. Bodies rose and fell on the swells. In terror, the survivors reversed their canoes and paddled frantically toward the far horizon whence they had come.

It was that night that the old man explained to Tamai what had happened, that the small boy they had rescued from the disappearing mountain had been the incarnation of mana, and that she was now the repository of that force. He went on to teach her the incantations that would make it possible for her to pass it along to the eldest of her sons. It was with that son that men took over the chieftainship of the Ocean People.

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