The season for the Paina depended on the position of the three central stars of Orion, with regard to which the following story is related. A certain married woman, on going down to bathe, was carried off by a stranger. When her husband discovered this, he slew her in his anger, and she fled up to be a star. The husband then took their two boys, one in each hand, and followed her to the sky, where the three form the belt of Orion. The wife, however, would have nothing to do with them, and remained in a separate part of the heavens. This is the only nature myth which we encountered on the island. CHAPTER XVI NATIVE CULTURE IN PRE-CHRISTIAN TIMES (_continued_) Religion—Position of the Miru Clan—The Script—The Bird Cult—Wooden Carvings. Religion The religion of the Islanders, employing the word in our sense, seems always to have been somewhat hazy,[49] and the difficulty in grasping it now is increased by the fact that since becoming Roman Catholics they dislike giving the name of “atua,” or god, to their old deities; it only drops out occasionally. They term them “aku-aku,” which means spirits, or more frequently “tatane,” a word of which the derivation is obvious. The confusion of ideas was crystallised by a native, who gravely remarked that they were uncertain whether one of these beings was God or the Devil, so they “wrote to Tahiti, and Tahiti wrote to Rome, and Rome said he was not the Devil, he was God”; a modern view being apparently taken at headquarters of the evolution of religious ideas. Both these words, tatane and aku-aku, will be employed for supernatural beings, without prejudice to their original character, or claims to divinity; some of them were certainly the spirits of the dead, but had probably become deified; the ancestors of Hotu-matua were reported to have come with him to the island. They existed in large numbers, being both male and female, and were connected with different parts of the island; a list of about ninety was given, with their places of residence. No worship was paid, and the only notice taken of these supernatural persons was to mention before meals the names of those to whom a man owed special duty, and invite them to partake; it was etiquette to mention with your own the patron of any guest who was present. There was no sacrifice; the invitation to the supernatural power was purely formal, or restricted to the essence of the food only. Nevertheless, the aku-aku, in this at least being human, were amiable or the reverse according to whether or not they were well fed. If they were hungry, they ate women and children, and one was reported as having a proclivity for stealing potatoes; if, on the contrary, they were well-disposed to a man, they would do work for him, and he would wake in the morning to find his potato-field dug, which, as our informant truly remarked, was “no like Kanaka.”